


The Freedom of Lindos

by Llywela



Series: The Time Between [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 08:15:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 57,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llywela/pseuds/Llywela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>En route to Scotland, the TARDIS accidentally lands the Doctor, Sarah and Harry in the middle of a desperate struggle for freedom on the other side of the galaxy</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lindos

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: This story is set immediately after the season 12 serial 'Revenge of the Cybermen', slotting in before 'Terror of the Zygons'  
> Disclaimer: The Doctor, his TARDIS and his companions belong to the BBC. I have borrowed them for this story and am making no profit from this.  
> With thanks to Sue for support, advice and encouragement

Previously, in 'Revenge of the Cybermen':

DOCTOR: "I'm needed back on Earth."  
SARAH: "How do you know?"  
DOCTOR: "I left the Brigadier a space-time telegraph system and told him not to use it unless he had a real emergency on his hands."  
SARAH: "And he's used it?"  
DOCTOR: "He has. Come on, you two."  
HARRY: "I say, what about the Commander? Aren't we going to stop and say cheerio?"  
DOCTOR: "Come on!"  
SARAH: "Don't argue."  
[ _Sarah drags Harry into the Tardis just before it dematerialises_.]

  
 

**Part One: Lindos**

 "Well, I just hope the Brig'll give us time for a hot bath and something to eat before he puts us to work," Sarah Jane Smith tiredly remarked as she opened the TARDIS door…and then stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of what lay beyond it.

 He'd done it again.

 "Strike that," she called, reflecting that once upon a time she might have been surprised. "I hate to say it, Doctor, but I don't think this is Scotland."

 Harry Sullivan, UNIT's medical officer and current travelling companion of Sarah and the enigmatic Time Lord known only as the Doctor, came to look over her shoulder. "Definitely not Scotland," he agreed, catching her eye with a look that was both rueful and resigned.

 "Not Scotland?" Pottering around over at the TARDIS console still, his outrageous scarf trailing along the floor behind him as usual, the Doctor peered at his instruments, fiddled with a couple of switches and then scowled. "High time I took the old girl in for a service," he loftily declared, before frowning suspiciously at Harry. "You haven't touched anything, have you, Harry?"

 "Certainly not," Harry retorted. "Are you sure you know how to steer this thing, Doctor?"

 "This 'thing'? Do I know how to steer this thing?" the Doctor indignantly echoed. "Do _I_ know how to steer this 'thing'?" Cramming that floppy old felt hat of his down over his riot of bushy curls with a grouchy and very pointed 'harrumph', he stalked out of the TARDIS in a huff.

 Sarah exchanged philosophical glances with Harry as they followed, stepping out of the TARDIS into an exotic landscape of blue-tinted hills and heathland beneath a brilliant green sky in which an orange-red sun hung low and hot, while two enormous moons loomed large, clearly visible even in daylight and breathtakingly close. It was quite possibly the most obviously alien-looking planet she'd ever set foot on and she gazed around in wonder, drinking it all in – the oppressive heat of that alien sun, the sound of alien insects buzzing in the bushes nearby, the heady scent of alien flowers carried on the breeze, the sight of multiple moons in an alien sky.

 This was something she could never grow tired of. Travelling with the Doctor, it sometimes seemed there was danger lurking around every corner, scarcely so much as a moment to draw breath, but then on the other hand…there was _this_. And it was beautiful.

 The Doctor was standing stock still, surveying their surroundings. "Sarah, you're right," he announced, wrinkling his nose. "This isn't Scotland."

 She rolled her eyes. "No, I thought not."

 "Lindos, I believe," he declared, gazing all around. The word didn't mean anything to Sarah.

 "What's a Lindos?"

 "This planet – that's what it's called. At rather an early stage in its history, I'd say, judging by the landscape – skyscrapers everywhere last time I was here – but I'm almost certain. Just look at that sky." Striding over to a tall, bushy shrub nearby to examine its vividly blue leaves and enormous bell-like flowers in more detail, he launched into a detailed monologue on the subject of the electromagnetic spectrum, gas molecules, stratification, refraction and atmospherics. It was all so much Greek to Sarah, but she latched onto the point that seemed most pressing.

 "You're saying that the sky looks green because this planet has a different kind of atmosphere than Earth? So is it safe? For us, I mean." In theory he'd have rushed them back into the TARDIS by now if he thought the air was dangerous, but in practice it didn't always occur to him to be cautious until it was too late. A few deep breaths drawn in experimental fashion suggested that the air was thin but breathable, at least as far as she could tell – the Doctor was the expert, though.

 "Oh yes, of course," he confidently stated…and then stopped and took a few deep breaths himself, as if sampling the air to be sure, before nodding again. "Yes, there's nothing harmful in the mix. Slightly lower oxygen content than Earth, perhaps, but not enough to be concerned about, you'll barely even notice after a while. Look at the pigmentation of these leaves, fascinating…"

 He was away again, this time rambling on about chlorin, chlorophyll, atmospherics again and the bio-chemical composition of plant life on this planet, Lindos. Sarah caught Harry's eye and shrugged; there was no stopping him when he was in this mood.

 Harry was apparently willing to give it a go, though. "Er, Doctor," he interrupted. "I'm sure that's all very fascinating and what-have-you, but you mentioned something about an emergency. In Scotland, you said."

 "Emergency?" The Doctor was the very picture of wide-eyed innocence, which meant he'd been hoping they'd have forgotten about that.

 "Yes, the Brigadier sent for us, remember," Sarah reminded him, knowing perfectly well that he already knew and this big show of ignorance was a put-on.

 "Rather urgent, by the sounds of it," Harry added.

 "Bah." Unable to deny it any longer, since they were ganging up on him, the Doctor pulled a disgruntled face. Then he shrugged expansively. "Oh, come on, we're here now, we might as well have a look around. It won't take long. See that rock formation over there…"

 "But the Brigadier –" Harry began to insist.

 "The Brigadier will still be there when we arrive, and so will his emergency," the Doctor blithely dismissed. "Stop worrying, Harry – you humans have such linear minds. The TARDIS is a time machine, remember. We can explore a little and still be in Scotland five minutes ago. Come along."

 He was already marching off toward the rock formation he'd indicated, his over-sized coat and scarf billowing in the breeze.

 "Stop worrying," Harry muttered. "It's only my career."

 It was the closest he'd ever come, in all their adventures, to complaining about having been effectively shanghaied; he usually took life with the Doctor so much in his stride it was easy to forget that, unlike Sarah, he hadn't actually chosen to come along for the ride.

 Personally, Sarah thought that spending some time in a quiet, peaceful place like this before plunging headlong into the Brigadier's new emergency sounded like a good idea; after everything they'd been through lately, since leaving UNIT for a 'little trip to the Moon and back' that had turned into anything but, she was sure they could all do with the rest. It was easy enough to understand why Harry might feel a bit twitchy about ignoring a direct summons from his commanding officer, though, even just for a little while. The Brigadier's message must have come as an uncomfortable reminder that he was technically absent without leave – after all, there was no chance now that they could return to the same day they'd left, not if they'd already been away long enough for the Brigadier to send for them because a new emergency had cropped up.

 "Oh, the Brigadier will understand," she reassured him, reaching out to rest a hand on his arm. "He knows what the Doctor's like. Speaking of which, we'd better not let him out of sight, come on."

 She paused to quickly pull the TARDIS door shut to keep any local wildlife out before turning to follow the Doctor, and by then he'd already disappeared over a nearby ridge.

 Sarah headed after him, Harry at her side…but as they topped the ridge they came to a standstill because there was no sign of the Doctor, or of which way he might have gone – the terrain was rugged enough that he could have gone in almost any direction and they wouldn't see him. The only way he definitely hadn't gone was toward that rock formation he'd been interested in, because the path leading there was both completely visible and completely empty.

 So much for not letting him out of their sight.

 "I say," Harry perplexedly exclaimed as Sarah slowly span on her heel to look in every possible direction. "Where's he got to now?"

 dwdwdwdwdw

 The Doctor had been distracted from interesting rock formations by the brilliant plumage of a passing bird almost as soon as he topped the ridge. He promptly changed direction to wander after it in hopes of a closer look, relishing a rare moment of pure exploration for its own sake before plunging into whatever it was Alistair wanted him for now; UNIT's continued reliance on him was chafing more than ever since this new face, high time they learned to stand on their own feet.

 "Very sophisticated people, the Lindosians," he recalled aloud as he weaved his way past bushy thickets and outcrops of rock. "They'd made some quite remarkable technological advances the last time I encountered them…" He tried to remember when that had been. "Oh, a long time ago now…or a long time still to come, rather – still no sign of any civilisation here, we might be even earlier than I initially thought…"

 It was only when he heard Sarah shouting his name from somewhere back along the trail that he noticed his human friends weren't with him and therefore weren't listening, and a moment later he came to an abrupt halt as he realised he'd inadvertently wandered straight into the path of an approaching off-road vehicle.

 The first sign so far of civilisation on the planet, the vehicle appeared to be some kind of cargo-hauler, heavily armoured and remarkably silent, propelled along atop a cushion of high-pressured air not unlike the hovercraft found on Earth. This vehicle was rather more advanced, however, evidence of a superior technology that seemed quite out of place in this supremely rural setting – it certainly wasn't Lindosian.

 "Hmm. Curious," he murmured to himself, wondering if he dared hope the occupants of the vehicle might be friend rather than foe. He encountered so many of the latter, as a rule, the odds were rather against him, but he always preferred to hope for the best until proved wrong. Raising his hands, he offered a beaming smile of the variety that he fondly liked to think of as his friendliest and called out a cheerful "Hullo there," as what was unmistakeably a guard, and non-Lindosian at that, stepped out of the vehicle. Well, it was always worth a try – keep them talking whether friend or foe, find out a bit more about who they were, and so on.

 The guard promptly aimed a weapon at him and his hearts sank. Why were they always hostile, right from the off? And what was this alien species doing on Lindos at such an early stage in the planet's development? It wasn't a species he was familiar with. Roughly humanoid, it had a long, narrow face with leathery yellow skin stretched taut over its bald head and prominent brow ridges, while a beak-like protuberance took the place of nose and mouth and there were hollows where the ears would normally be. It was a rather fierce-looking creature, all told – or perhaps merely somewhat annoyed that he was in its way. After all, it didn't do to judge a new species by appearance, even if it was brandishing a gun at him on a planet that wasn't its own.

 "I mean you no harm," he called. "I wonder if you could tell me –"

 Even as he spoke, another of the unidentified beings leaned around the open door of the vehicle, growling, "We don't have time for this, bag it," and the first nodded and fired.

 Point blank range, almost – no time to move, no chance to duck. Enveloped in a blinding flash of energy that paralysed every muscle and every nerve, as the Doctor fell he found a moment to be glad that Sarah and Harry didn't seem to have followed him…and then the side of his head cracked against a rock as he hit the ground, and he knew no more.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 Instead of grass underfoot, the ground was carpeted with a strange kind of thick, blue moss-like vegetation that was far too springy to hold any footprints that might have indicated which way the Doctor had gone.

 Harry straightened from his examination of the ground just in time to be almost deafened as Sarah cupped her hands around her mouth and bellowed, "Doctor!" right into his ear.

 There was no reply.

 "Oh, this is just typical," she grumbled, and Harry had to agree. The Doctor was a remarkable chap, but he really could be the absolute limit sometimes, wandering off and leaving them in the lurch like this within minutes of landing on a strange planet, with no idea where they were, still less if it was safe – probably not, if past form was anything to go by. And with the Brigadier expecting them back on duty, as well. Be lucky not to end up on charges for going AWOL, intentional or not, if –

 "I say, what was that?" There'd been a sound, faint but distinct. A sound that was almost familiar – couldn't quite put his finger on it, though.

 Sarah looked alarmed. "Was that weapons fire?"

 That was it – sounded just like those energy weapon thingies the Daleks and Cybermen used, and it had come from, "This way."

 He started to run, Sarah at his heels, because the Doctor's disappearance followed by the sound of gunfire could only mean one thing: he was in trouble, again – already…which, of course, meant that they were _all_ in trouble, again – already.

 In the time he'd known the Doctor – only a short time, really, although it felt more like a lifetime – being in trouble seemed almost to have become routine.

 That moss underfoot was strangely slick and Harry almost slipped more than once as he sprinted around the rocks and bushes, with unexpectedly thorny fern-like fronds catching at his ankles along the way. He ran through a cleft in the hills that surrounded them, and then skidded to a halt at the sight of a vehicle, some kind of hovercraft, it seemed, disappearing off into the distance. Seemed strangely quiet for such a large, fast-moving craft – almost no engine sound at all; if he hadn't seen it he'd never have guessed it had been there. No tyres to leave tracks, either.

 There was also no sign of the Doctor, except for… "Look." Sarah caught at his arm as she pointed. "There's the Doctor's hat."

 As she stooped to pick it up, Harry noticed something else and crouched to take a closer look. It was blood, smeared over a half-buried rock near to the discarded hat.

 "What is it, what have you found?" Sarah had turned to see what he was looking at.

 "Ah…er…" For two pins he'd have tried to spare her the sight. Not much point, though, in the circumstances, and she wouldn't thank him for it, he knew her well enough to know that. It was already too late, anyway. "Doesn't look good, I'm afraid, old thing," he admitted – remembering too late that Sarah didn't like him calling her that. She didn't appear to even notice this time, though.

 "Something's happened to him." She was made of stern stuff, Sarah, but she was starting to look a bit scared now – and Harry was feeling more than a little uneasy himself. "That craft – do you think they've taken him?"

 "Certainly looks that way – well, whoever 'they' are." Harry straightened to gaze after the vehicle, which was already out of sight; no chance of catching up, the speed it had been going. Could be anywhere by now, the Doctor with it, presumably, and if he was injured, he wouldn't be able to help himself – which rather begged the question of just what they were supposed to do now.

 There was a particular kind of sinking sensation, deep in the pit of the stomach, that had become uncomfortably familiar since Harry's fateful first encounter with the Doctor, back at UNIT, in what felt almost like another life now, it was so impossibly far away. He felt that sensation now, full force. They were supposed to be returning to their lives on Earth. The Doctor had seemed in such a hurry after receiving the Brigadier's message. Strange how fast a situation could change, from the reassurance of a promised return home to the creeping uncertainty that came of being stranded on an alien world, exhausted at the very thought of the new ordeal that surely lay ahead.

 They had to find the Doctor. Had to. But how?

 There was a skittering noise somewhere behind them, the sound of feet slipping on loose stones, and Harry span around just in time to catch a flash of movement – someone hiding behind an outcrop of rock nearby.

 Now what?

 He gestured silently for Sarah to stay back while he investigated, no sense in risking both of them, but she promptly shook her head and mimed that they should try to approach the hidden observer from opposite sides, then started to edge around the rock before he could argue, calling out, "Who is it? Who's there?"

 Well, there was nothing else for it but to take advantage of the distraction she was creating, so Harry moved quickly to creep up on their secret observer from the other side, and then pounced.

 "Hallo, what have we here?" He hauled the creature out from behind the rock, wriggling and yelling. It was small and light, startlingly easy to capture, and when he got a proper look he almost dropped it in surprise and had to redouble his grip before it could run away.

 "It's a child!" Sarah gasped. "An alien child."

 If it were a human child, Harry would have pegged the boy at no more than 12 or 13, perhaps. Skinny and ragged, his skin was an odd grey colour, with strange markings across the face, wide eyes with vertical slits for pupils, rather like a cat, and a shock of brilliantly silver hair sticking out in all directions as if he'd stuck his finger in an electric socket. He seemed absolutely terrified, whimpering and crying and cringing at being manhandled, and Harry was mortified at having such an effect on a mere child.

 "It's all right, it's all right." He relaxed his grip, gave the child an awkward pat on the shoulder and shrugged helplessly at Sarah. "We're not going to hurt you."

 "That's right, don't be scared. Everything's going to be all right." Sarah bent to look the boy in the eye, her tone soothing. "Can you tell me your name?"

 The boy stared at her for a moment and then looked up at Harry, wide-eyed and breathing hard, shaking like a leaf. "You aren't sky raiders," he whispered with wonder in his voice, as if he scarcely dared believe it.

 "Sky raiders?" What the dickens was a 'sky raider' when it was at home?

 "No." Sarah looked puzzled as well. "No, we're not sky raiders. My name is Sarah and this is Harry. Who are you?"

 The boy seemed calmer now. He looked down at the hand Harry was still loosely gripping his arm with, poked at it with a finger and then tugged experimentally at the fabric of the jacket sleeve with a curious expression. "What are you?" he asked, all innocence, head tilted to one side in quizzical fashion.

 It was a fair enough question, Harry supposed – still felt rather odd, though, to be the alien on someone else's world. "Well, we're…er…visitors, I suppose you might say."

 "Sky visitors?"

 "Visitors from the sky, you mean – from space?" Well, that was one way of putting it. "I suppose so, yes," he bemusedly agreed.

 "What are you doing here?" the boy asked, still very wary but interested, his curiosity overriding his fear now that he was satisfied they weren't 'sky raiders', whatever those might be.

 "We're looking for our friend." Sarah folded the Doctor's hat and tucked it into her belt. "Have you seen him? He looks a bit like us."

 The boy shook his head. "Is he strong?" He peered up at Harry again as he added, "You look strong," and then hung his head and shuddered, fearfully. "They take everyone who's strong. They'll take me soon."

 He was rather a scrawny little thing, in fact, so probably didn't need to worry about that just yet, but the point was taken: they would need to be on their guard.

 "So you're saying that these sky raiders capture people who are strong – people who are fit enough to work…or to fight, perhaps?" Sarah turned worried eyes toward Harry as she added, "So they would have taken the Doctor, if they'd come across him," before swinging back to the child. "Do you know where they take these people?"

 The boy was huddling into himself now, shaking and shivering, his eyes big and wide and fearful, welling up with tears. "I don't know. They take everyone," he whispered. "I was chasing…"

 And suddenly Harry noticed that the knees of the child's breeches were torn, his hands scraped and bleeding – the blood was a strange greenish-grey sort of colour, but recognisably blood nonetheless. "I say, you're hurt," he exclaimed and the boy started to cry in earnest, the broken, hopeless sobs of a child at the very end of his tether.

 "I fell. I was chasing and I fell…"

 "Er…" Distressed children were rather a long way from being Harry's area of expertise. With the boy clutching at his arm, he looked helplessly toward Sarah for assistance – women understood how to handle these things, didn't they? She rolled her eyes at him rather eloquently, but came to the rescue anyway, making appropriately reassuring noises as she encouraged the boy to sit down on a nearby rock.

 Tending to minor injuries, on the other hand, was well within Harry's bailiwick, so while Sarah soothed, he turned his attention to the boy's cuts and scrapes – and was rather taken aback when the child instinctively flinched away as if fearing a blow. "Er…it's all right. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm a doctor," he awkwardly offered by way of reassurance.

 "Doc-tor?" The boy didn't seem familiar with the word, but he watched solemnly as Harry examined his injuries, which were superficial, and then a smile of sudden comprehension lit up his face. "A healer? We have no healer, not for many seasons now," he confided.

 "Taken by the, er, the sky raiders, was he?" Harry dug a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and looked around for a source of water he could use to clean dirt out of the boy's grazes, but there was nothing in sight. "I say, what's your name?"

 He wasn't really expecting an answer, since Sarah had already asked that question twice with no response, but this time the boy replied, "Roba. I am Roba."

 "All right then, Roba, I don't suppose there's any water hereabouts, is there? We could do with cleaning out these wounds of yours."

 "There is a stream," said Roba with a sniffle. "At the encampment."

 "Is it far?" It couldn't be far, not if he'd had been chasing that vehicle – even an Olympic athlete would have struggled to keep up over any real distance – and a shake of the boy's head confirmed it.

 "Who did they take?" Sarah gently asked. "Who was it they took today, that made you chase them this time?"

 Roba was trembling again and his voice was no more than a whisper. "My mother. They took my mother. They take all the mothers, all the fathers – everyone…"

 Sarah threw an arm around him and turned anxious eyes toward Harry. "What are we going to do?"

 He could only shrug. "Well, what can we do? We're going to have to find them."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 Emera huddled with the others in the gloom of the sky cart and knew that she would never see her home or her children again. So many before her had already been taken, but none had ever returned and so neither would she.

 It had been so long since the last raid, they had almost allowed themselves to hope that there would be no more, that the sky raiders would know their people were used up, not worth returning to, and would leave them alone. But no. The sky raiders were as inevitable as the seasons, and as merciless. Already there were so few of them left, struggling to keep the last remnants of their community alive for the sake of the children, but now even these last few had been taken – so what hope was there for the children left behind?

 What hope had there ever been?

 And what hope was there for the young ones among those who'd been taken with her – like young Olos, with barely 16 summers behind him? Those taken were younger each time, and although the gods of Lindos had long since abandoned their people, still Emera thanked them now that her own boy was not yet big enough to be of interest to the sky raiders. She knew, though, that the day would come when he too would be corralled into the back of a sky cart like this one, never to return.

 And for the first time since the sky raiders tore her away from her children and bundled her into the back of this sky cart, it occurred to her to wonder just where they were going, and why.

 A low moan nearby made her jump and she nervously huddled back against the others as the strange creature the sky raiders had thrown in here with them suddenly started to move, rolling onto its back and groaning as if in pain. Able now to see it clearly for the first time, she stared in fascination at its strange pink skin and hair the colour of bark, and the outlandish garb it was wearing, so unlike anything she'd ever seen before.

 The others shuffled further away and made sounds of distress as the creature began to pull itself up onto its elbows, but Emera stayed where she was, unable to take her eyes off it as it looked all around, taking in their cramped and gloomy prison before fixing its eyes upon their sorry little group.

 "Oh, hullo there," it said, and again the others huddled away in fear.

 Emera was afraid also – she was afraid of many things – but this strange creature seemed to her to be the least of their concerns at this time. What it was and where it had come from were unknown, but it was a prisoner just as they were and she could see that it was injured, the side of its head sticky with blood that was redder than the blooms of summer wildflowers. So how dangerous could it possibly be?

 "Hello," she softly called back, ignoring the feeble protests of the others at such daring, and was rewarded by a weak but beaming smile.

 "Hallo, who are you?" the creature asked.

 Scarcely knowing what she was doing, Emera shuffled closer. "Emera. My name is Emera."

 "Charming to meet you, Emera," said the creature. "Now, I need to ask you a question, it's very important."

 "Yes?"

 It leaned toward her and lowered its voice to hiss in a confidential tone, "Where are we?"

 "Do you not know?" she asked in surprise.

 "Ah, now there's the thing." Wincing, it pressed a hand against the wound at the side of its head and then peered at its bloody palm with some dismay. "I know rather a lot of things, Emera. I know who won the finals of the Alpha Centauri table tennis championship in the galactic federation year 4297. I know how to calculate epsilon coordinates standing on my head – and all the words to _La Vie En Rose_. I know that the navigational stabilisers are out of kilter and the oscillations are feeding back and throwing the helmic regulator out of whack, that's how we ended up here, you see, and I really must see about a few repairs some time. I know that I should be in Scotland at this very minute. My old friend the Brigadier will be quite put out if I'm late and I'm afraid it rather looks as if I will be. I also know that this crate we're in appears to be moving: at least forty miles per hour, if I'm any judge – which I can assure you that I am. However I do appear to be rather fuzzy on a few points, such as just _where_ exactly we are and why we happen to be sitting in this crate. I'm sure there are all kinds of good reasons as to why one might wish to travel by crate, but I can't seem to come up with any off the top of my head. Perhaps you would care to enlighten me?"

 A dazzling smile followed this lengthy monologue. Emera could only stare in utter bewilderment. Perhaps the others were right after all to be afraid of this incomprehensible creature which babbled such nonsense.

 One thing she had understood, however, was the question at the heart of the prattle. "You were taken," she told the creature. "All of us were taken."

 "Taken?"

 She shuffled a little closer again, all but whispered the words. "The sky raiders came, they took us. Then they took you."

 "I see." The creature followed her example by leaning closer still and whispering its next question. "Where are they taking us?"

 Emera shivered. "I don't know."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 So this was what happened when proud but primitive nomadic tribes-folk had their herds slaughtered and their population decimated by alien invaders and were then left to rot in between raids, their spirit completely broken.

 Gazing around, Sarah decided that the worst thing about the encampment was all the evidence of how vibrant it had once been – tents and wagons that had once been bright and gaudy, decorated all over with brilliant murals, now as faded and broken as the people who lived in them.

 Or maybe the worst thing was how tiny Roba's community was, a population composed almost entirely of children, the elderly, the sick and the infirm.

 Or perhaps the worst thing was how readily these people accepted the arrival of aliens in their midst, too downtrodden and shell-shocked to even react, almost. They'd been visited by aliens before, on too many occasions, and so their only reaction was relief that Sarah and Harry didn't seem inclined to attack them like those others.

 "We arrived here by accident," Sarah explained to the elder woman who'd come to talk to her – the honorary leader of the tribe, it seemed, in the absence of anyone else willing or able to take on the role after the depredations of the sky raiders. "And then our friend went missing and we saw some kind of vehicle moving away – we think it must have taken him."

 The old woman, Caran, nodded sagely. "It is what the sky raiders do. Always they take."

 "Well, then we ran into young Roba." Sarah glanced nervously at the sombre little crowd that had gathered to listen to her story, wishing that Harry had stuck around to help her out instead of disappearing off somewhere to doctor Roba's injuries. "And, well, here we are."

 Caran smiled sadly. "There is little enough we can offer you, visitor, but such as we have, you are welcome."

 "Oh, no – no, we don't want anything from you," Sarah hastily explained. "Only we do need to find our friend, so we'd be grateful for anything you can tell us about the sky raiders. Do you know where they take your people, after a raid?"

 "Would it help you to know?"

 She was surprised by the question. "Of course. If we can find out where they've gone, we can go after them and find our friend – maybe even help get your people back."

 It hadn't occurred to her to even consider any other options – the Doctor had been taken by these sky raiders and they had to go after him; that was all there was to it – but the old woman was shaking her head. "It is not possible," she sorrowfully stated. "Many have tried. None have succeeded. The attempt leads only to ruin."

 "But we have to do something!" The prospect of going after these mysterious sky raiders in search of the Doctor was overwhelming – so much for that rest and relaxation Sarah had been hoping for – but she refused to simply give up and just accept that there was nothing they could do and they were stuck here, instead of doing whatever they could to help him when he needed them. Not that they'd be stuck for long, if the sky raiders came back, since she and Harry both fitted their target demographic to a 't' – which gave her another idea. "How soon do you suppose the sky raiders will come back, Caran? Perhaps if we hide, we might be able to stow away somehow. If we could make it back to their base without being seen, maybe we could –"

 "No." The old woman shook her head again. "Even if it were possible, the sky raiders will not return now for many seasons – they have taken all who could serve them and must wait until the young ones are grown."

 It was a dreadfully grim statement to be made with such resignation. Sarah looked at the defeated faces of the people gathered around them. "You can't go on like this," she murmured and Caran nodded her agreement.

 "It is true. Our people are worn out. Soon they will be done with us."

 "And what happens then?"

 She almost wished she hadn't asked; the old woman looked so crushed. "Then," Caran said, "The last of our people will die and there will be none left to keep alive the memory of our ways."

 "But you can't just give up like that." Sarah knew that she couldn't even begin to understand what these people had been through, but she was determined not to be infected by their hopelessness. "Isn't your freedom and your future worth fighting for?"

 The flash of anger that came into Caran's eyes was a welcome relief from the all-pervading atmosphere of defeat. "You think we have not fought? When the sky raiders first came, when we were still strong, we did all that was possible to hold them off. But what use are arrows and spears against sticks that bark fire, that paralyse? How can a bull-wagon outrun carts that fly through the air like clouds, faster than wind? No." She looked very old and very tired, yet there was an air of dignity about her that was almost heart-breaking. "We fought and we were defeated and in time we will die."

 "I'm sorry," Sarah whispered. "I truly am. I'm sorry for everything that's happened to you, for all the people you've lost…but I can't just give up. I won't. So please – can't you tell me anything at all that might help me find where they've taken my friend?"

 She found herself shrinking away from the searching gaze Caran directed at her during the long pause that followed, and had all but given up hope of receiving any support at all when at last the old woman reluctantly replied, "Long ago, when the sky raiders first came, scouts were sent to track their movements. Few ever returned…"

 "But some did." Sarah eagerly seized on that detail. "So what did they say? Is there anything that can help us know where to begin?"

 She was subjected to another of those penetrating stares. "To go after the sky raiders is to court death. Do you truly wish to follow this course?"

 "Yes." She couldn't – wouldn't – just give up on the Doctor like that.

 Caran looked sad but resigned. "Then perhaps I might show you…"

 dwdwdwdwdw

 After her conversation with Caran, Sarah went looking for Harry and found him sitting alongside a fairly sizeable stream bandaging the scrapes on Roba's knees. Hands waving around to illustrate some point, the boy was chattering away nineteen to the dozen, more animated than she'd seen him yet – the resilience of youth, she supposed – while a whole gaggle of smaller children had gathered around.

 "Ah yes, I see," Harry was saying as she approached. "I suppose if you stick to the riffles, look out for obstructions…"

 "Yes. And where the bank overhangs the water," Roba eagerly agreed. "That is a good spot."

 "You look like the Pied Piper of Hamlin, Harry. What on Earth are you talking about?" Sarah bemusedly asked.

 "What on Lindos, I think you mean, old thing," Harry lightly retorted, and she poked her tongue out at him, both for being facetious and for the 'old thing'. The children giggled and Harry grinned. "Fishing, Sarah. We're talking about fishing."

 Whatever she'd been expecting, that wasn't it. "Fishing?"

 "Well, Roba here's been telling me that's how his people keep themselves going, these days."

 "Yes," Roba eagerly explained. "Once we had many herds and we travelled the length and breadth of the plains…but then the sky raiders came. They burned the wagons and killed all our animals…" His voice faltered and he hung his head unhappily.

 "So these days, it seems, they mostly live on whatever they can catch from the stream here," Harry finished for him, and she could see how that conversation might have led into a discussion of technique, men being men. It had certainly broken the ice.

 "Fish supper tonight, then – you know something about fishing, do you, Harry?"

 "Quite a bit, actually – my grandfather used to take me every Sunday, when I was a boy." It was the first time she'd ever heard him mention any part of his family. "All right, I'm finished here, Roba, off you go," he added, and then waited for all the children to scurry away before turning back to her, looking very serious. "You've finished talking to the old girl, then, have you?"

 Sarah rolled her eyes. "Yes, thanks for all your help with that."

 "I was just on my way over. So do they know where the Doctor might have been taken?"

 "Sort of." She let out a heartfelt sigh as she found a flattish rock alongside him to sit down on. "Caran was keen to talk us out of going after him, though – she seems to think it would be certain death to even try."

 "Well, we'll see about that," said Harry, and his optimism felt very reassuring after Caran's pessimism, even if Sarah knew only too well that he always tended to strike a positive tone, whether he knew what he was talking about or not. "Chances are he'll have freed himself and meet us halfway, wondering what all the fuss is about."

 It was a nice thought. If only! "Well, let's hope so, because if he doesn't we've got a very long walk ahead of us! Caran gave me a sketch, a kind of map." She pulled out the scrap of rolled hide to show him. "It shows the way to the mountains – that's where the sky carts go after a raid. She doesn't know if they carry on further after that, no one's ever tracked them beyond that point, but it's a start, at least. She's going to have some provisions packed up for us, if we're really determined to go."

 The grim resolve in Harry's expression assured her that he was every bit as determined as she was. "To the mountains it is, then," he said, "And the sooner the better, really, if we don't want to lose the light."

 "I want to come," a small voice unexpectedly piped up, and Sarah span around to see Roba standing behind them, looking very anxious and very earnest.

 "Oh no, I don't think that would be a good idea," Harry hastily demurred and she agreed wholeheartedly.

 "Why not?" demanded the boy, eager and resolute. "No one else will go, they say there's nothing we can do, but you say there is. You're going after them, no one ever goes after them – let me come too. I want to find my mother. I can help you, I promise."

 "No, Harry's right," Sarah gently told him, alarmed at the thought of having to take responsibility for a child, on top of what they were already facing. "We couldn't possibly take you with us. It's far too dangerous –"

 "But I'm not scared, I'm a man now," the boy insisted.

 "That's right," Harry promptly agreed. "You're the man of the house now, aren't you – and someone has to look after those sisters of yours, eh, old chap. That's your job now."

 "But my mother…" He looked almost desperate.

 "Your mother would want you to look after your sisters, I'm sure," Sarah quickly assured him, taking Harry's word for it that there were sisters to be looked after. He was the one who'd been talking to the boy. "And I promise you – an absolute promise, Roba – I promise we will do everything we can to find your mother and bring her home to you."

 She only hoped they would be able to keep that promise – both for him and all the other orphaned children in this encampment.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 The foggy confusion of the Doctor's first awakening had given way at last to clarity, which was something of a relief. He did so hate to be muddled.

 It didn't take long to explore the confines of the haulage vehicle in which he and a group of very frightened and very primitive Lindosians were imprisoned. The deadlock seal on the rear doors was rather dispiriting, but the sonic screwdriver would no doubt make short work of the hinges…if not for the fact that jumping out of a fast-moving vehicle at an unknown altitude might not be the ideal solution to their predicament. It certainly wouldn't resolve the problems of Lindos long-term.

 He chose instead to wait and see where they were taken, and used the time to discuss the general situation on Lindos with his new friend Emera, who appeared to be the only one of the bunch with any spirit left at all. She was certainly the only one willing to talk to him.

 What she told him was very worrying indeed. Alien incursions at this early stage in the planet's history – that wasn't something he'd been aware of previously, which meant something would have to be done about it, if these people were to stand any chance of developing into the noble and highly advanced race he'd previously encountered, thousands of years in their future.

 Something would also have to be done about finding Sarah and Harry at some point, as well, of course, but he was confident they'd be able to look after each other well enough in the interim. First things first. Cessation of movement told him they'd reached their destination. It was time to start finding out just who Emera's 'sky raiders' really were – and what they were up to.

 Well, it was a good idea in principle. The sky raiders themselves seemed to have other ideas. As the rear door of the vehicle swung open and the terrified Lindosian captives cowered back in fear, the Doctor donned his sunniest smile and opened his mouth to offer a witty greeting…which died on his lips unspoken as his captors grabbed him roughly by the lapels before he could utter a word and unceremoniously hauled him away.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 Sarah was as bad as the Doctor for finding a cause to latch onto wherever they went, Harry wryly reflected as they picked their way through a particularly rocky stretch of the hills in the gathering gloom of dusk. The plight of the natives certainly had her all fired up – she hadn't stopped talking about it since they left the encampment. "It's as if their spirit is completely broken – there's just no fight left in them at all. So if they can't fight for themselves any more, we're just going to have to fight for them and get rid of these alien invaders."

 "Whoever they are," he interjected, wishing there was any way it could be as easy as she made it sound. He felt sorry for the natives as well, but there were only the two of them.

 Still, they would be three when they found the Doctor, and he was easily worth a whole army. And they had promised the boy Roba, after all.

 "I know the Doctor will agree, when we find him…" That 'when we find him' was Harry's primary concern just at the moment, but it was pushed back into second place by the way Sarah's voice trailed off as she peered around rather furtively, not for the first time.

 "What is it?"

 "You know, I'm sure we're being followed."

 The anxious little glances she kept darting over her shoulder were starting to make Harry feel uneasy now, so he listened carefully, but, "I can't hear anything."

 "I didn't say I'd heard something," Sarah argued. "But I am sure we're being followed. Can't you feel it?"

 He couldn't. They'd been making much slower progress than they'd hoped since leaving the encampment, the terrain proving rather difficult to navigate with only that map the natives had given them as a guide – it was a dreadfully rough affair, to put it kindly – but in all the time they'd been walking they'd encountered nothing more than a few strange-looking insects and birds, and one large, toothy rodent about the size of a cat, which had fled the moment it spotted them. They'd been warned that wild animals prowled the hills at night, but there'd been no sign so far of any such thing – or of much else at all, for that matter.

 "I suppose it's just my imagination," Sarah glumly conceded and they trudged along a little further in silence, before she brightened up all of a sudden. "Hey, look! There were two moons earlier – I can see four now. Look, you can see them now it's getting dark."

 Harry gazed up at the sky to see that she was right: there were more moons visible now that dusk was falling. Quite a remarkable sight, really – it certainly reinforced just how far from home they really were…not that such was needed. It was something he was never able to forget, wherever the Doctor took them, each step of each journey seeming only to lead ever further away. Real life, back home on Earth, seemed farther away than ever now, just when their retrieval of the TARDIS and the Brigadier's summons had allowed him to hope that he might be returning to it at last.

 Probably best not to think along those lines though – certainly not while the here and now was so pressing. Their situation was what it was and that was all there was to it

 "Well, I should say the local sailors must have a jolly rum time of it, that many moons," he observed aloud. "Just imagine the tides!"

 Sarah snorted. "Trust you to think of that." Then she let out a heartfelt sigh that Harry concurred with wholeheartedly. "I suppose we'll have to stop soon and find somewhere to sit it out until first light, if we don't want to break our legs stumbling around these hills in the dar – what was that?"

 This time it definitely wasn't her imagination, Harry had heard the sound too – the sound of something large moving around in the scrub nearby. He span around in alarm, fervently hoping it wasn't one of the sky raiders they'd heard so much about…or one of those wild animals the natives had mentioned, for that matter.

 All seemed quiet again – but something had made that sound. With Sarah clutching at his arm, Harry took a step forward, squinting in the half-light trying to make out whatever might be out there, and called out, "Hello? Who's there?"

 A moment later, a dark shape came looming out of the shadows and Sarah let out a piercing scream.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 


	2. Journey

 As a dark shape came lunging out of the shadows, Sarah couldn't hold back a shrill yelp of shock and fear – and then almost collapsed with relief when she saw who it was. "Oh, Roba!" she gasped.

 "What in the world are you doing here?" Harry demanded.

 The boy had the grace to look abashed. "I told you, I want to come with you. I want to go after the sky raiders and find my mother," he stubbornly declared, and Sarah's relief faded into dismay.

 "Oh, no – we couldn't possibly take you with us, Roba," she hastily protested. "Tell him, Harry."

 "She's right – you really shouldn't have followed us like that, old chap. Who's going to look after those sisters of yours if you aren't there, eh?" Harry gently chided, but one look at Roba's unrepentant face told Sarah he was wasting his breath.

 "I promised my sisters I would find our mother," the boy insisted. "I promised I wouldn't go back without her."

 The awful thing was that she could understand his resolve perfectly and sympathised with it wholeheartedly, admired him for it…but he was just a child. How could they possibly take him with them on this journey, when they had no idea what they might be facing?

 "Stay there a minute while we talk about this," she firmly instructed the boy, and then grabbed Harry's arm and pulled him to one side to hiss, "Now what?"

 From the look on Harry's face, he'd been hoping she would offer him the answer to that question. Scrubbing a hand through his short thick curls, he worriedly said, "He doesn't seem willing to go back of his own accord, does he?"

 "But we can't exactly turn around and take him back ourselves, can we? We'll lose enough time as it is, if we stop for the night. We can't delay any more – anything might be happening to the Doctor while we wait."

 "Or to Roba's mother," Harry quietly observed. "And the other captured natives."

 So that was that. There was only one option left and she didn't like it, not one bit. Sarah sighed. "We're stuck with him, then. But he's so young – what are we supposed to do with him?"

 Harry shrugged. "Look after him, I suppose. What else can we do?"

 She reluctantly gave in to the inevitable. "We don't seem to have much choice, do we? We can't turn back now." Turning back to Roba, she warned, "It'll be dangerous, Roba – you'd be much better off at home."

 "I don't care," he stubbornly declared, with all the fearlessness of youth. "I won't go back, I won't – why should I when they'll only come and take me in the end anyway. If you try to leave me here I'll follow you again. I can help, I really can, I promise."

 "I don't suppose it would be safe to send you home alone in the dark, anyway," Sarah reluctantly conceded. "So that's it, then: we're all in this together."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 The Doctor was bored.

 Upon arrival at the alien base, he'd been unceremoniously hauled out of the cargo vehicle and shoved into an annoyingly secure little side room just off the loading bay, where he'd been stuck ever since. The room appeared to have been carved out of sheer rock, suggesting that it was underground; there were no windows, no ventilation shafts and no movable ceiling or floor tiles – the heavy door was the sole means of exit from the room and it was securely barred, resisting his every attempt at escape, which was most uncooperative of it.

 It wasn't even as if he wanted to go far – just far enough to get his bearings, find out who these creatures were and what they wanted, and see what could be done about it. He had no doubts whatsoever that they would be back for him sooner or later…but since he had rather a lot to be getting on with, he would prefer it to be sooner rather than later.

 At long last the door swung open, and this time the Doctor was quick to get in a riposte before any violence could ensue. "Ah, there you are. About time, too," he declared in his most imperious tone. "Let's get on with it, shall we?"

 Unfortunately, his attempt at sweeping out of the room ahead of his captors was foiled by the fact that they were blocking the doorway, but they were suitably nonplussed by his breezy attitude nonetheless, which was just the reaction he'd intended.

 "Hold," one of them snapped, raising a hand in the manner of a traffic conductor back on Earth. Flanked by guards, both his uniform and manner marked him out as high-ranking, and his next words, spoken with disdainful arrogance, confirmed this hypothesis. "I am Proctor Silrin of Tarse. You will speak when spoken to, alien."

 This was news to the Doctor. "Will I really?" he interrupted, and received a baleful glare for his trouble.

 "You will accompany me to the interrogation chamber and there give an account for your presence here."

 The Doctor had no particular objection to this instruction, so he obeyed it. Accompanying his captors to their interrogation chamber afforded him a good look at the general layout of the place, which gave the impression of being a fairly small-scale facility, rather than a major operation, and was most definitely underground, carved out of some kind of natural cave system. The interrogation chamber itself was merely a larger room than the one he'd previously been held in, with quite a civilised seating arrangement to make use of during their mutual cross-examination of one another – in fact, he had his doubts as to its really being an interrogation chamber at all. The name sounded suitably intimidating, of course, which was no doubt why it had been used, but it looked rather more like a generic meeting room to his experienced eye.

 "Why don't you tell me about Tarse, Proctor Silrin," he suggested, making himself comfortable.

 Silrin glowered. "You will speak when spoken to, alien."

 "Yes, you mentioned that already," the Doctor conceded, and then blithely continued with his train of thought. "You see, the name rings a bell, but I'm afraid I don't really know very much about the place. Is it far from here?"

 "Your question is irrelevant, alien –"

 "Doctor," the Doctor corrected. "I'm known as the Doctor and I really would much prefer it if you called me that, rather than 'alien', descriptive though the word may be. After all, you are aliens yourselves, aren't you? You don't belong on this world any more than I do."

 "Enough!" Silrin slammed his fists down on the table, shouting in the Doctor's face. Easily enraged, then; a man who liked to bully and bluster – that could be useful to know. "You will explain yourself, alien. Where are you from? How do you come to be here?"

 "Oh, I was just passing by," the Doctor shrugged, maintaining his studied air of nonchalance. "And yourself? How do _you_ come to be here?"

 "Where is your ship? Are you alone?"

 "As you see," he evaded, since, wherever they were, Sarah and Harry would be much safer if Silrin and his cronies remained unaware of their presence on Lindos. "However, I'm rather concerned about the Lindosian natives I was travelling with earlier in that splendidly uncomfortable vehicle of yours. Where are they now?"

 Silrin narrowed his eyes. "You are a spy," he hissed. "Who do you work for?"

 "A spy?" The Doctor was intrigued. "And just what would I be spying on?"

 "You know very well that our consortium controls the lupium industry back on Tarse," Silrin snapped. "Our competitors have frequently resorted to underhand tactics in their attempts at gaining a foothold in the market, but this is a new low – your incompetence is astounding."

 "Yes, I'm dreadfully sorry about that – it must be terribly frustrating for you to have to deal with amateurs," the Doctor absent-mindedly sympathised, thinking hard. It was all beginning to make sense now. "Lupium, eh. That's a very precious commodity indeed. There's rather a rich vein of it running through the primary moon of Lindos, you know – and of course you _do_ know, because that's why you're here," he guessed, and Silrin's angry reaction confirmed this hypothesis.

 "What else do you know?" the Proctor snarled.

 "Well, it's less a question of knowing and more a matter of really quite basic deduction. You've established mining operations on that lupium-rich moon, I imagine, which has enabled you to establish a strangle-hold over the economy back home." Silrin had as good as told him as much, with those angry accusations of his. "I take it this base is some sort of outpost used to round up a few of the natives from time to time, presumably for hard labour in the mines. Am I right?"

 Silrin had become very still. "You are very well informed, spy."

 "Yes, aren't I?" the Doctor coldly agreed. "Not so incompetent, after all, eh. But the thing I don't understand is _why_. The Lindosian natives are primitives. It can't possibly be worth your while housing and training them for work in the mines when you could so easily automate the process."

 "Mechanoids are expensive," Silrin sniffed. "Native labour is a cheap and renewable resource, readily available and utterly expendable – why should we not make use of it?"

 "Why not?" The Doctor was disgusted. "I could give you a thousand reasons why not. Enslaving and brutalising a harmless and intelligent indigenous people for the sake of a few extra points on your profit margin? To say nothing of stealing a natural resource that rightfully belongs to them: robbing them of their world, their culture – their future. It's a disgrace!"

 "Oh, so you're one of _those_." Silrin's disdain knew no bounds. "Just where did the native rights campaigners find you?"

 "Not only is it immoral," the Doctor continued. "It's also extremely poor economics –"

 "How dare you!" Silrin's indignation at this slur on his business acumen might almost have been amusing, if the Doctor weren't so very furious.

 " _Extremely_ poor economics," he fumed, remembering what Emera had told him of the Tarsin depredation of her people. "You're burning through your slaves faster than their people can reproduce and raise their young. Carry on like this, and they'll be extinct within a generation –"

 "There are other continents," Silrin coolly dismissed, and the Doctor was outraged.

 "Oh yes, there are other continents, more native peoples to conquer and destroy…but for how long? How long will it take you to work your way through them all? This is genocide, you understand – an entire indigenous population being wiped out simply to put a few extra credits in your account in the short-term. And where will that leave you? You'll have no choice but to automate then. Did you factor _that_ into your business plan?"

 "Silence!" thundered Silrin. "This session is at an end. Patrols will be sent out to search for your spacecraft and any associates who may have accompanied you on this mission. You will be taken to central command – we shall decide what to do with you there." 

dwdwdwdwdw

 Sarah had been joking about the fish supper. It wasn't such a joke, however, when the provisions packed for them by the natives really did turn out to be little more than dried fish and a few root vegetables. Roba proved immediately useful to have along, however, disappearing off into the gathering murk and coming back with an armful of juicy berries, which looked delicious – although Harry then remembered that he was a professional and insisted on performing a few empirical tests before he'd let her eat any, just in case they turned out to be toxic to humans.

 They got a fire going and sat around it with their picnic, and it might have all been good fun, camping out under the stars for the night, if it didn't feel like such a colossal waste of time, waiting out the hours of darkness while the Doctor was goodness only knew where doing heaven only knew what.

 Sarah had never been very good at waiting for anything. She liked to keep busy and active, always had, remembered driving Aunt Lavinia up the wall as a child, running around all the time and refusing to sit still. It chafed, having to sit around like this not knowing what was going on beyond that the Doctor was always alarmingly good at getting himself into trouble.

 He was also very good at getting himself out of trouble, of course, and it helped to remember that.

 Roba wouldn't stop talking. His mood swinging wildly from bravado to agitation and back again, he was full of questions, non-stop questions: how far did they think they would have to go, what would they do if they ran into any of the dreaded sky raiders, was it safe to stay out here in the middle of nowhere all night, how were they going to free his mother, were they really going to do all they could to find her, did they think she'd be all right, why did they have to stop for the night – who, how, what, why, when…?

 Sarah was an inveterate asker of questions herself, always had been; she was a journalist, inquisitiveness was part of her job…or, if you looked at it another way, becoming a journalist had given her a good excuse for being nosy. Now that she was on the receiving end, however, she found herself wondering how Aunt Lavinia and her teachers had never throttled her as a child, because she certainly didn't have the patience for it herself!

 Or maybe it was just the circumstances that were getting to her. She could see that they were getting to Roba, his anxiety levels rising visibly as the light faded. Anger and determination had brought him this far, but he couldn't sustain that kind of drive in the face of the long night that lay ahead any more than she could stand the thought of it herself. He was just a child. He shouldn't be in this position.

 She didn't know the answer to any of his perfectly reasonable concerns, that was the trouble, and being asked the questions only reminded her of how much was unknown here – and of how worried she was herself. How could she reassure him when the very same doubts and fears were dancing in circles in her own head?

 It was no good, she couldn't settle.

 "I'm going for a walk." She jumped to her feet, cutting across Roba's latest anxious query about whether they really thought his mother would be all right while they waited here overnight – Harry could field it.

 "A walk? You sure, old thing – it's awfully dark."

 "Yes, I can see that, thank you, Harry." Or not see, as the case may be, which was his point, of course; that was the whole reason they'd decided to stop for the night rather than risk stumbling around this rocky hillside blind, but just now she didn't care. Still, she softened her tone to add, "I'll be careful – I'll get some more of those berries. I won't be long."

 She hurried away before he could argue, cautiously picking her way around the rocky crag toward the berry bushes Roba had found while the list of everything they didn't know yet turned over and over in her mind.

 They didn't know who the sky raiders were, where they came from, what they wanted with the natives they captured, or where the prisoners were taken, beyond 'the mountains'. They also didn't know what the sky raiders might want with the Doctor – or what the Doctor might do with them, for that matter.

 He would try to escape, that much was a given. And when he found out what was happening here, what the sky raiders were doing to the natives, he would want to put a stop to it. That was certain, too. What she didn't know was how he might go about it, what the sky raiders might do to stop him – or how they were going to find him so they could help. 'The mountains', Caran had said, but as destinations went it was depressingly vague.

 A rustling sound in the bushes brought her back to the here and now. Wild animals prowled these hills at night, Caran had said. She stood stock still and listened. Was it the wind she could hear rustling the leaves, or an animal moving through the bushes? Four moons made for a bright night, but it was still too dark to really see much of anything – certainly too dark to find any berries. It was also chilly, away from the fire, and Harry was a bit of worrier, he'd be anxious if she was out of sight for long, in the circumstances. Tripping over a rock in the dark and breaking her leg wasn't going to help anyone, either, any more than fretting about all the things they didn't know.

 There was that rustling sound again – definitely high time she got back to the others.

 She allowed herself to be guided by the smell of smoke and the sound of voices carried on the breeze as she stumbled along over the uneven ground, too far away at first to make out the actual words – she'd wandered further than she'd realised.

 "…look, I do understand how you feel, old chap," Harry was saying in his most conciliatory tone as she came within earshot.

 "Your friend was taken," Roba mournfully conceded. "But a friend is not a mother. Your mother was not taken."

 "She wasn't taken, no. She died."

 Sarah stopped in her tracks, just beyond the flickering light cast by the fire, before either of them realised she was there. She hadn't known that. She'd considered Harry a friend, a good friend, for all his maddeningly old-fashioned ways, ever since they were tied up together in that bunker during the business with the giant robot back on Earth, but she hadn't known about that. He never talked about anything personal – and she'd never asked.

 To be fair, they were usually a bit too busy running for their lives to swap sob stories.

 "I suppose I'd have been a bit younger than you are," he quietly continued. "But I do remember how it felt, you know, when no one could save her. I'd have done anything – just like you'd do anything now."

 Sarah could picture the look on his face just from the sound of his voice: that little crease in the brow that always appeared when he was uncertain or felt uncomfortable for any reason. She had no memory of her own mother and didn't know how it felt to lose one, had been happy enough growing up with Aunt Lavinia instead, but she did know the ache that came of having an empty space where a mother was supposed to be.

 "I would." Roba sounded subdued, almost tearful. "I have to find her."

 "Oh, we'll find her, don't you worry – but not tonight, eh. We'll start moving again at first light." That was Harry's hearty voice, the one he used when he was pretending to be more confident than he really was, and Sarah moved forward again now that the moment seemed to be over.

 "No berries, I'm afraid – didn't fancy cutting myself to ribbons trying to pick them in the dark with all those thorns."

 "Sarah. We were just about to send out a search party," Harry greeted her with a little grin that told her he'd been concerned.

 "I haven't been that long," she began to protest…but then realised that she probably had. Flashing a quick, sympathetic smile at the heavy-eyed Roba, she sat down alongside Harry and bumped her shoulder against his. "Sorry, I didn't mean to go so far, I just couldn't sit still any longer. I can't stand all this waiting around."

 "Is that so?" Harry looked amused now. "Can't say I'd noticed."

 "Oy!" She bumped her shoulder into his again, harder this time, and then caught his eye and they both grinned.

 "Look, why don't the two of you try to get some sleep," said Harry. "I'll take first watch."

 Sleep. Wouldn't that be a fine thing? As she settled down, staring into the flickering flames of the fire, Sarah ruefully reflected that it would probably be easier to achieve if she could only switch her brain off for a little while. As soon as she closed her eyes that list started running through her mind again, over and over, all the things they needed to achieve as soon as it was light enough to see the ground beneath their feet once more: find their way to the mountains, find either the sky raider base or whatever route they took beyond that point, find the Doctor, find Roba's mother, find a way to get rid of the sky raiders…

 Sleep felt a long, long way away.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 The Doctor closed his eyes and settled in for a brief cat-nap in the cramped little cell he'd been locked into aboard the Tarsin transport vessel, since there wasn't much else to do on the journey between Lindos and its primary moon.

 Well, he could always try to escape, of course, but there wasn't much point in that at this stage – better to bide his time and wait until they reached the moon base, where there'd be far more scope for positive action – so he might as well get some rest while he had the chance. The journey wouldn't take long, he knew. From what he'd seen of the vessel as he was brought aboard and the feel of the vibrations through the deck plate as it took off, he guessed that it used mag-repulsion engines, presumably on some kind of pre-set relay, which was an efficient enough method of short-range space travel, if not terribly creative, and would certainly make short work of the distance between the planet and its moon.

 Sure enough, it wasn't long before he felt the change of motion that signalled their landing and bounced to his feet to await the arrival of the guards to escort him wherever it was they intended taking him.

 "Ah, good day to you, sirs," he jovially declared as the door slid open, and went to doff his hat to the two guards standing just outside only to remember that he'd lost it at some point down on the planet, so turned the movement into a rather grand, sweeping bow instead. "What a splendid journey – very smooth, very swift; my compliments to the pilot. Now, it's this way, is it? Do lead on."

 The fact that they did just that demonstrated how inured they were to compliant prisoners – they'd never have turned their back on him like that if they had any experience of captives giving them trouble, which meant any hint of rebellion must have been beaten out of the slaves long ago. The Doctor pondered whether or not to burst their bubble by escaping on the spot, before deciding that he'd rather not see the alarm raised too quickly. Instead he dutifully followed them along a few corridors, making a careful note of the layout and maintaining a spot of light chit-chat along the way in an attempt to learn a little more both about the base and about their plans for him.

 Disappointingly, both of his guards proved to be extremely poor conversationalists. Even more disappointingly, they turned a final corner to find Proctor Silrin there waiting for them, looking severe.

 "Ah, Silrin," the Doctor greeted him. "What a disappointment to run into you again so soon. Time to finish our conversation, is it?"

 "You will be silent until spoken to," Silrin snapped, opening a door.

 "Another interrogation chamber?" the Doctor lightly remarked. He waved an arm, expansively. "After you."

 The guards promptly brandished their weapons at him as a gesture of their displeasure with this suggestion, while Silrin glowered. "Not at all, spy – after you."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 Roba had never been this far from the encampment before, never ever in all his life.

 It was completely dark now. He'd grown up with stories of the things that lurked in the night, fearsome beasts roaming the hills. He'd called them mothers tales, yarns spun to keep the young ones from straying beyond the safety of the camp – he'd said he was old enough to know better now, knew that the real danger lay with the sky raiders, and only babies believed in things that went bump in the night.

 But now he was out in the hills in the dark, far away from the safety of the encampment, and those stories were all he could think about.

 He wasn't afraid, though. He wasn't. Really, he wasn't…even if there were strange noises away in the shadows, beyond the flickering light cast by their very small fire. He wished again that they could have more fire, a whole ring of fire to shelter within, but Harry and Sarah had said no. There wasn't enough wood, not to keep burning until sun-up, and too much light and heat might attract attention, sky raider attention. So there was just the one small fire and they were taking turns to keep guard while the others slept.

 Only Roba couldn't sleep. He wanted so badly to be brave, to help these strange visitors from space find the sky raiders and defeat them, and to take his mother home again, just like he'd promised…but it was hard, in the dark of the night, to believe that such an impossible dream could ever be true. No one who'd been taken had ever come home again before.

 The space visitor Sarah wasn't sleeping either, even though it was her turn. Roba could hear her talking softly with Harry, who was on watch. Although… did it count as keeping watch if everyone was awake anyway?

 "Anything might have happened to him by now, you know." Sarah's voice was so low that he had to strain to make out the words.

 "I know, but – look, just…try not to worry, eh, old thing." Harry's voice was also very quiet – they thought Roba was asleep, he knew, and were trying not to wake him.

 "I can't help worrying. It's been hours – you know as well as I do how quickly things can go wrong. And now we're marooned here until sunrise…we don't even know what we're going to do when we get there."

 "Well, we don't know what we're going to find when we get there."

 "We still need to have a plan – we should be prepared for anything."

 Harry sighed. "Look, let's just worry about getting there for now, shall we?"

 "And then what?"

 "Well, then we'll do a recce," he said. "Check the lie of the land. We'll be in a much better position to make plans then."

 There was a bit of a pause before Sarah said, "Stop being sensible, Harry. It doesn't suit you," which was a strange thing to say, but her voice sounded as if she was smiling as she said it, and Harry huffed a soft chuckle under his breath.

 "We just have to hold out until sunrise, Sarah, that's all," he said. "Then we'll find the Doctor and sort all this out – and then we can get back to the TARDIS and try for Scotland again, see what the Brigadier wants."

 "Are you still worrying about that?" Sarah asked as Roba shifted his head slightly so he could hear better, trying to understand the meaning of their strange words.

 Harry was quiet for a moment. "Well, there isn't a great deal we can do about it just at the moment, is there?" he said at last. "Try to get some sleep, Sarah. I'll wake you for your shift." Then he raised his voice slightly to add, "You too, Roba. Get some sleep, you'll need it," which came as quite a shock, because Roba was certain he hadn't made any sound. How did they know he was still awake?

 Since he'd given himself away anyway, Roba fidgeted around a bit, trying to get more comfortable on the hard ground. Then he stared into the glowing embers at the base of the fire and thought about home and how far he was from it, and how it wasn't really home any more anyway, not when so many dearly beloved people were gone and there was nothing to expect in the future but more of the same. Maybe following these space visitors in search of the sky raiders was foolish, but it was the only chance he had to save his mother. And it was better than sitting at home and doing nothing, each person doing the work of ten – even the smallest children – always just waiting and waiting for the next raid, wondering who would be taken this time…

 He finally began to drift off to sleep, only to be jolted from his almost-slumber by the sound of a ferocious growl coming from the shadows beyond the fire.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 It all happened very fast, after that first warning growl.

 As Sarah scrambled upright, she was dimly aware that Harry had leapt to his feet and shoved Roba behind him, and then her attention became absorbed by the _whatever it was_ that was charging right at her from the shadows. In the dark of the night, lit only by the flickering flames of their feeble little fire, she caught no more than a vague impression of slathering teeth and claws before Harry grabbed a burning stick from the fire and shoved it in the creature's face. It fell back, yelping and whimpering…but then another came flying out of the shadows in its place.

 In the desperate whirl to fend off the vicious creatures, Sarah lost track of how many there were. They seemed to be everywhere, attacking from all sides as fast as she and Harry could beat them away, with young Roba cowering against the rocks behind them. She kicked at one and hit another with a branch from their pile of firewood, then spun around too late to fend off a third, but was saved by Harry and that burning stick of his again. A moment later, yet another had launched itself at Harry's back and he reeled away, flailing, but before she could rush to his rescue, there was still another charging at her. She kicked desperately at it, batted away another and then turned to see that Roba had broken out of his paralysis of terror to help Harry fend off the one that was attacking him, lashing out wildly with a big stick in either hand.

 Still the creatures kept coming. Sarah distantly wondered if this was how a fox felt when it was being hunted, hounded on all sides until it was too exhausted to go on. Their fire had gone out, the last embers trampled into the ground, so they could no longer even see the creatures as they charged but could only thrash blindly to defend themselves.

 The attack ended as suddenly as it had begun when a light lit up the hills – not from above but from a distance, like the headlights of an approaching vehicle – and the creatures fled, melting away into the shadows as if they had never been there. The transition from _fighting for life_ to _all over and safe now_ was so abrupt that it took a moment to sink in, but a moment later Sarah realised that the light looked like the headlights of an approaching vehicle because it _was_ the headlights of an approaching vehicle, and on this planet that could only mean sky raiders, which meant they weren't safe yet.

 "Take cover – hide, quick!" she yelled, grabbing Harry's arm and giving him a little shove, because he hadn't made the connection yet and she could hear the low hum of the vehicle's engine now, which meant it was too close already, the light getting brighter. It would come sweeping around the bend any second now and they couldn't afford to be seen.

 She caught a glimpse of Roba's face, eyes wide with panic, mouth open to scream his dread of the sky raiders, but before the boy could make a sound Harry had clamped a hand over his mouth and hauled him behind the rocks they'd made their camp against. Sarah threw herself after them and lay very still, holding her breath as the sky cart rumbled past.

 It hadn't seen them.

 "Oh, thank God. I thought we were done for." She leaned against Harry's shoulder, gulping in huge, shuddering gasps until her breathing was under control again.

 "Are they gone? Are they gone, are they gone, are they gone?" Roba whimpered. He was clinging to Harry's other arm as if his life depended on it and Sarah felt again the weight of responsibility that came with having charge of such a youngster on a journey that would have been difficult enough just with the two of them. How could they expect a child to cope with whatever else might lie ahead – and how could they live with themselves if anything happened to him along the way? Yet what other choice was there at this point but to take care of him as best they could?

 "Yes, it's all right, they've gone now," Harry confirmed, and he managed to only sound a little bit shaky. "That was a near one – is everyone all right?"

 "I think so." Sarah ran a quick self-assessment, while Harry turned to give Roba the once over. Her heart was still pounding like a jack-hammer, but aside from a few scratches and bruises she appeared to be completely uninjured and could hardly believe it, those creatures had been so ferocious.

 Then she heard Harry mutter, "Well, that's torn it," and noticed, as her eyes adjusted to the dark, that he was trying and failing to examine the back of his own arm, remembered seeing one of those creatures jump at his back.

 "Were you bitten, Harry?" A surge of renewed anxiety lent sharpness to her voice that she didn't quite intend. They were in the middle of nowhere with next to no supplies, the Doctor was missing, there were wild animals and sky raiders all around…an injury was the last thing they needed just now – especially if it was the medical officer among them who was injured. Sarah's own Girl Guide level first aid skills would only get them so far.

 "I hardly noticed at first – adrenaline, I suppose." Harry was grimacing, it clearly hurt, but on the whole he seemed more bemused than anything, so it couldn't be as bad as all that. Sarah allowed herself to relax a notch once more.

 "Well, let's just hope those things don't have whatever the local equivalent of rabies might be, then. Here, let me. You can tell me if I'm doing the first aid wrong."

 She pushed his hand away so she could take a look at the wound, ignoring his pained, "Ow, steady on, old thing," as she helped him peel his jacket off and then squinted in the moonlight before giving her diagnosis.

 "Well, there's quite a bit of blood," and she pulled a face as she said it, because the truth was that she would rather deal with Cybermen or Sontarans than blood any day of the week, "We'll have to bind it, but honestly, I think your jacket took the worst of it."

 "Do you think they'll come back?" Roba quavered. Sarah wasn't sure if he was talking about the sky raiders or the creatures, but either way the answer was the same.

 "I don't know – I hope not." She glanced around at the dark, gloomy hills that surrounded them. There could be anything lurking out there and they wouldn't know until it was too late. Those creatures knew where they were now and they couldn't rely on more sky raiders coming along to frighten them away the next time – couldn't rely on finding cover in time if they did, for that matter. "But we'll be sitting ducks here if they do. So I suppose we have a choice. Do we stay here and just hope those creatures don't come back? Or should we start moving again and take a chance on not breaking our necks in the dark?"

 "Well, one thing's certain," Harry ruefully remarked. "None of us will be getting any sleep tonight."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 "So what was it you wanted to talk about this time, Silrin?" There was a single chair in the bare little interview room the Doctor had been shown into, but it looked rather uncomfortable so he perched on the edge of the table instead and smiled winningly at the Tarsin. Silrin glowered and the Doctor laughed. "You know if the wind changes, your face will stick like that."

 "You prattle nonsense to avoid answering my questions," Silrin sniffed. "Why are you here?"

 "That's a very interesting philosophical question, Silrin. Tell me: what's your understanding of the concept of the immortal soul?"

 "You understood my meaning – equivocation will not help your situation."

 The Doctor chose to ignore this statement in favour of pursuing his train of thought. "I believe it was Plato who theorised that humans were composed of two parts: an immortal soul housed in a mortal body – although he got the idea from the much older Persian philosophy, of course. You might be surprised to know just how many sentient races develop similar theologies, across all corners of space and time –"

 "Enough!" snapped Silrin. "You will not distract me. Answer the question."

 "But I already have, Silrin," the Doctor mildly reminded the man. "You asked me before, down on Lindos, and I told you – I'm just passing through."

 "That is not good enough."

 "Well, I'm dreadfully sorry you feel that way, of course, but it happens to be the truth."

 "Why are you here?" Silrin demanded.

 The Doctor sighed. "We're back to that again, are we?"

 "What do you hope to achieve?"

 "I assure you, Proctor Silrin, I had no particular ambition in mind when I landed, although I did think I might look around for a while before continuing my journey – the Lindosian landscape is rather lovely, don't you agree?"

 "Enough of these lies!" Silrin was becoming increasingly heated. The Doctor eyed him thoughtfully and maintained his nonchalant demeanour.

 "But I'm afraid I hadn't quite finished my sightseeing before I was accosted by your men – rather rudely, I might add, and quite without provocation."

 "Illegal trespass on Tarsin property is provocation enough."

 "Illegal trespass? Tarsin property?" The Doctor allowed a harder edge to sharpen his tone. "You have no authority here."

 "This planet and its satellites belong to Tarse by right of conquest," Silrin declared.

 "I dispute that claim!" the Doctor snapped.

 "You admit your guilt!" Silrin was triumphant.

 "If opposing the illegal occupation of a populated planet is an admission of guilt –"

 "It is."

 "Then so be it."

 "Who sent you?"

 "Why does it matter?"

 "Answer the question!"

 "Well, how many opponents do you have to choose from? You mentioned the native rights campaign – your practice of enslavement is not popular back home, then?"

 Silrin snorted. "Do-gooders protesting on the basis of hearsay and rumour," he dismissed. "Easily discredited. They have no proof to support their claims."

 The Doctor stilled, intrigued. "You mean they don't know?"

 "What?"

 "Your people, the masses – the government, even. They don't know that they've conquered an occupied planet and enslaved the indigenous population, purely to boost the profits of the private corporation which now holds them all to ransom?"

 "Who do you work for?" Silrin hissed. "What are your plans?"

 "So what happened?" the Doctor pressed, determined to get to the bottom of this. "Someone on the initial exploration team saw the geological survey and became greedy, falsified the reports? How do you keep a secret that big? You can operate at a minimum staffing level, perhaps, buy their silence with threats and bonuses, but some of them must talk, surely? Is that where the native rights campaign came from – information leaked by unhappy employees, denied by the company? So what happens if the truth comes out? Would your people care? You know, I rather get the impression that they would."

 Silrin was rattled – too rattled to continue the interrogation, which was a shame; the Doctor had hoped to get a bit more information out of him. "You speak of things you don't understand, spy," he snarled. "But be prepared to tell the truth next time we talk."

 Spinning around on his heel, he stalked out of the room without looking back.

 The Doctor shrugged and offered a cheerful wave to the guards as they slammed the door shut. Then he got down to business – the time for waiting games was now over.

 Private security guards rather than military, they hadn't even asked him to turn out his pockets: that was how unaccustomed they were to handling any prisoner who wasn't a broken-spirited primitive. The Doctor listened at the door for a moment until he was satisfied that both guards had walked away down the corridor, and then pulled out the sonic screwdriver and got to work.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 Harry Sullivan prided himself on being a practical-minded sort of chap, not much given to flights of fancy, but even he was just about jumping at his own shadow by the time the first rays of sun began to light up the sky, signalling the end of their night-long ordeal of scrabbling through the rocky hills fending off ravenous local wildlife and avoiding sky raider patrols. Not that either of those requirements was necessarily at an end, of course, but they'd at least be able to see where they were going now, instead of stumbling around in the dark.

 Since meeting the Doctor, he'd felt as if he were stumbling around in the dark more often than not, but it wasn't usually quite as literal as it had been this long, arduous and occasionally painful night, since they'd decided that keeping moving would be marginally safer after all than waiting it out until dawn.

 "They're definitely looking for something," Sarah whispered as yet another sky cart rumbled past their latest scanty hiding place.

 "Yes, us," Harry hissed back at her. He couldn't think what else the aliens might be looking for out here in the middle of nowhere.

 Sarah shook her head defiantly. "How would they even know we're here? The Doctor wouldn't have told them, I know he wouldn't."

 Harry didn't think so either, but facts were facts. "Look, I'm not saying he did, but you said it yourself, old thing – they're definitely looking for something."

 "Well, whatever they're looking for, they've gone now, so we'd better get moving again before they come back," Sarah retorted. "It can't be much further now, surely. And stop calling me old, Harry – how many times?"

 He was always forgetting how much that annoyed her. Muttering "sorry, sorry," more from habit than any actual regret, Harry pulled the map out again, suppressing a wince as his injured arm registered a protest at the abrupt movement, the thickness of improvised bandage tight beneath his jacket sleeve. "Not too much further, by the looks of this," he agreed, squinting at the very rough sketch in the hazy half-light that dawn afforded them. "Jolly hard to be sure, though – this thing isn't exactly to scale."

 Sarah leaned over his shoulder to peer at the sketch. "Well, there's that three-fingered rock," she said, her breath warm against his ear. "We passed that a while back."

 "Rather more by luck than by judgement." Harry still wasn't sure quite how they'd managed to stumble over that landmark in the pitch black of night, but if they'd missed it they'd most likely have gone miles in the wrong direction before they realised their mistake.

 "Maybe the gods are watching over us," Roba rather surprisingly suggested. Taken aback, Harry looked at Sarah, who lifted her eyebrows and shrugged.

 "Who knows? Maybe they are – we could certainly use the help!" She flashed a dazzling smile at the boy before returning her attention to the map. "All right, so if we're here, more or less," and she pointed at their approximate location, "And the three-fingered rock was back in that direction, then we need to go…" She spun around and gesticulated, "That way."

 As they set off again, while the going was good, young Roba caught hold of Harry's jacket sleeve and hung on tight as they cautiously picked their way around scrubby thickets and over outcrops of rock, keeping a sharp eye out for animals and sky carts all the while. They'd all three been hanging onto one another during the night so as not to lose each other in the dark, but the boy's desire – perhaps need – to maintain that contact in daylight came as a bit of a surprise. Harry had never thought of himself as a particularly child-friendly sort of person; he'd have expected Sarah to appeal to the boy more, she had a knack for endearing herself to people that he'd never quite mastered. He remembered how it was to lose a mother, though, and could only imagine how he'd have felt if someone had come along and offered a way to save her that involved facing his deepest, darkest fears.

 No one ever had made that offer to him; there'd been nothing anyone could do. But there was still a chance that Roba and his family could have their happy ending – if they could only find their way to that sky raider base that was.

 The directions they'd received had been rather vague: head for the mountains, they'd been told, because that's where the sky raiders go. The fact that mountains tended, in general, to be rather large and therefore quite difficult to explore at any speed hadn't really come up. The terrain grew ever more rugged as they went along, while although the rising sun made the going a lot easier, it also made them considerably more visible to passing sky carts than they had been overnight, and they were constantly on edge, listening out for potential danger. Sarah didn't seem to have thought of it yet, but they weren't at all equipped for any serious mountaineering, and Harry was starting to get a bit concerned about just how far – and high – they might have to venture, as their route took them steadily upward through the steep, jagged slopes that formed the foothills of the mountains. It was jolly rough going already – increasingly slippery underfoot as a fine drizzle filled the air, while humidity levels rose steadily with the rising sun – and he didn't like to think how much worse it might get before the journey's end.

 Exactly what they thought they were going to do if and when they reached their destination was another problem best not pondered. They would have to cross that bridge when they came to it.

 He told himself again not to think about it and concentrated instead on helping first Sarah and then Roba scramble up a particularly steep shelf of rock. Then he began to clamber up after them and promptly lost his own footing, tumbled several feet back down the rocky slope to land heavily on his injured arm, sending a jolt of white-hot pain shooting through the nerve endings and whiting out his vision.

 "Harry!"

 There was a woman and a child present, there was a woman and child present, Harry breathlessly reminded himself, biting back an invective as Sarah came slithering back down from the ledge at speed, calling for Roba to stay where he was.

 "Are you all right, are you hurt?" She was suddenly at his side, hands fluttering over him anxiously.

 That first fiery rush of pain was subsiding, he could breathe again, and a very careful examination assured him that the wound had not re-opened. He nodded, but took a few more breaths before he dared trust his voice. "Sore, but nothing broken – I'm all right."

 "Well, thank goodness for that." Sarah sat back on her heels. "I certainly couldn't carry you if you'd busted an ankle or something. Here." Pushing upright, she held out a hand to help him up…but he'd no sooner taken it than her foot slipped on the damp moss underfoot. She fell forward, throwing Harry off-balance before he made it upright, and they both went over in a heap.

 That just about summed up this whole trip so far, really.

 Harry took a moment to catch his breath again and sort out their tangled limbs, while Sarah simply leaned her head against his chest and shook with laughter.

 "Well, I'm glad someone thinks it's funny," he grumbled.

 "If you could see your face!" chortled Sarah …but her giggles quickly died away to become a weary groan as she rolled onto her back, lying against his good arm with her head resting on his shoulder. "Oh, I've never been so tired. Are we nearly there yet?"

 "I wish I knew," he admitted with a weary sigh, dislodging her as he pushed up onto his elbows. They could be right on top of the place already and they wouldn't know – there was no scale to that map. Or they might be miles away still, for all he could tell. He wasn't entirely sure how they were supposed to recognise whatever they were looking for when they saw it, for that matter.

 Pulling herself up to a sitting position, Sarah looped her arms around her knees, a curtain of silky dark hair tumbling forward to frame her face. "You know, the Doctor keeps promising me a nice, quiet, uneventful trip – somewhere fun, where we can relax. It hasn't happened yet."

 "At least you knew you were going somewhere before you went." The words escaped before he could censor them, and Sarah looked worried.

 "You don't really regret it, do you, Harry?"

 Now there was a question. Did he regret it? Did he regret swapping a comfortable life on Earth, the stability of a job he enjoyed and was good at, for the uncertainty and confusion of careering around the universe at the whim of the Doctor, never knowing which end was up, all because he hadn't believed it when the Doctor claimed that the rickety old police box in the corner of his lab was actually some kind of space ship? Even now he knew the truth of the matter, Harry still felt that his stance on that point had been perfectly reasonable – who in their right mind would ever believe that a chap might keep a time machine in a police box? The Doctor had invited him to step inside just for a moment, just to demonstrate the so-called illusion…and they'd been hurtling from one desperate battle to another ever since, without so much as a moment to draw breath in between.

 He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a good night's sleep – or a hearty meal. Couldn't remember the last time he'd gone a full 24 hours without having to run for his life, for that matter.

 He'd also seen some rather amazing things along the way – witnessed the future of mankind, no less. He'd helped to save lives, as well, and that was something he could never regret – it was, after all, his primary calling in life. But as far as the rest of it went….

 "Ask me again later," he said, "If we manage to find the Doctor and sort all this out."

 "You mean when," Sarah immediately corrected. " _When_ we find the Doctor and sort all this out."

 Harry mustered up a tired smile for her benefit. "Of course," he agreed. "I mean when."

 "Shall I come back down?" Roba's anxious little voice piped up from further up the rocky shelf.

 "No, stay where you are, Roba," Sarah quickly called, meeting Harry's eyes with a tired little shrug. "We're just coming."

 "No rest for the weary, eh."

 Sarah's answering smile was rueful. "Come on."

 They helped each other up off the damp, mossy ground and scrambled back up that steep rocky shelf to re-join a very anxious Roba, who promptly reached out and caught hold of Harry's jacket sleeve again, and then they heard it: the unmistakeable hum of a sky cart engine, far too close already and approaching fast.

 They just barely had enough time to dive behind a thorny thicket for cover before the sky cart came zooming past the spot where they'd just been standing.

 Unwilling to take any chances, they crawled around the other side of the bush and over a ridge to watch where the sky cart was going…and found that they had a bird's eye view of the vehicle as it whooshed across a narrow valley and disappeared into a tunnel at the foot of a mountain on the other side – a very artificial tunnel, at that: large and square with sturdy metallic support struts and a reinforced roof.

 So, whatever else it might be, their destination was at least easy to recognise, after all.

 "Well, I should say we're just about there, then," Harry redundantly observed. With Sarah at one shoulder and Roba nervously clinging to his other arm still, he peered across the valley at the tunnel, wondering how far back into the mountain it extended…and just how many of those sky raider aliens might be lurking inside.

 "Sky raider central," Sarah thoughtfully murmured. "And they've left the door open."

 Harry stared at her for a moment, then looked over at the tunnel and back again as her meaning slowly sank in. "Now, look here, Sarah, you're not suggesting that we…"

 He didn't bother finishing the sentence, because of course she was.

 "We have to get inside, Harry. The Doctor's in there!"

 "We _think_ ," he countered. It was probably true, but they had no way to tell for certain.

 "Well, if you have any better suggestions, I'm all ears," Sarah hotly retorted, and he waved his hands in surrender because he did actually agree with her, in broad principle, at least. They needed to find the Doctor, after all. The trouble was that he was also anxious for all three of them to stay alive and out of enemy hands and wasn't sure that charging in blind would be the best way to achieve that.

 "What are you saying?" Roba looked confused. "What are we going to do?"

 Sarah lifted an eyebrow. "Yes, Harry – what are we going to do?" she pointedly repeated.

 Harry sighed and gave in. "I suppose we should try to get a closer look, at any rate. We might scout around a bit, first, though – there could be some kind of back door."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 The Doctor flattened himself against a wall and waited until the footsteps of a pair of passing Tarsin had died away, then cautiously peered around the corner to check that the coast was clear before moving on. He'd reached a junction in the winding corridors that made up the moon base, and quickly recited an old Gallifreyan counting rhyme under his breath to help him decide which way to go, since there were no signs or other markings to indicate what might lie in either direction – most inconsiderate of the Tarsin architects who had designed and built the place, he felt. The counting rhyme pointed him left, so he turned right and went that way instead, moving swiftly but cautiously; he had no desire to run into anyone just yet.

 The base didn't appear to be overly populated; not in this sector, at least, which he took to be a positive sign, so far as his continued freedom to roam was concerned. And, despite their aversion to helpful signage, the Tarsins had very kindly installed handy viewing panes in their doors, allowing him to peep into each one to see what was inside. He was hoping to find some kind of control room, preferably unoccupied, where he could tap into their systems and learn a bit more about what was going on both here and on Tarse, which would help him to formulate a plan of some kind. This depredation of Lindos and its people simply could not be allowed to continue. Unfortunately, he appeared to be in completely the wrong area – nothing but kitchens, common rooms and crew quarters, all of which was very interesting, in its own way, but wasn't going to furnish him with the information he needed.

 Then he spotted a computer console in one of the crew rooms. The door was locked, but the sonic screwdriver quickly saw to that, and he was soon inside the room, where he spent a speculative few minutes tapping away at the console's keypad. It was easy enough to access the contents of the terminal – mostly personal logs, which he quickly skimmed through because all information was of value – but, rather disappointingly, it turned out to be a standalone device with no connection to the centralised system he wanted to explore.

 "No, no, this won't do at all," he muttered aloud…but of course there was no one to listen because he'd mislaid his human friends – quite some time ago, as well, which was a bit of a worry.

 He allowed himself a moment or two to fret about what might have happened to Sarah and Harry after he lost sight of them, but then pushed those concerns out of his mind once more in order to focus on the task at hand. There was nothing he could do for them at present and the lives of the Lindosian slaves had to take priority. Sarah and Harry could fend for themselves and he would search for them at the first opportunity, but just now he needed to find that control room. He'd wasted too much time already.

 The Doctor headed back out into the corridor to continue his exploration of the base, but he'd no sooner stepped through the door than an alarm began to blare. He froze in his tracks, listening intently. So his absence had been noticed at last. He was going to have to hurry.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 The door to the sky raider base was closed after all; a heavy door, at that, set across the tunnel a little way in, too far back to be seen from a distance.

 So much for Sarah's optimistic hope of being able to simply walk right in.

 It turned out, though, that Harry was right about there being a back door – sort of. They found it more or less by accident, in the end, as they wearily scrambled around the steep mountain slopes, on edge, painfully exposed and increasingly desperate to find a way, any way, of getting inside that base.

 They could, of course, have simply sat alongside the doors and waited for them to open again, and Sarah was exhausted enough that she almost wished they had – at least they'd have been able to rest a little – but they weren't quite that desperate yet.

 Some way above the tunnel was a plateau that had probably once been a natural feature of the mountain, but which now bore the scars of sky raider occupation in the form of the most enormous trap doors Sarah had ever seen, cut deep into the rock. They weren't going to get in that way, either, but further down the incline was a cave. They ducked into it for shelter when the steady drizzle of the morning turned into a sudden burst of heavy rain, and were startled to realise that they could hear noises, the distant sound of voices and machinery, coming from somewhere deep within the mountain.

 The cave was the entrance to another tunnel. It was damp, narrow and cramped, but it led into the base – it had to, for that sound to be coming through. Whether or not it was big enough for adult humans to get through was another question entirely, but it was the only possible way in they'd found, so they had to give it a go.

 Sarah already had sore feet, painfully blistered from an unanticipated night of orienteering through steep, rocky hills in shoes that she would not have chosen to wear for this trip if she'd known what it was going to involve. Now she was acquiring quite a collection of scrapes and bruises to go with them as she squeezed and occasionally crawled her way through the pitch dark and painfully narrow passageway, continually catching her head, elbows, shoulders and hips on rocky protuberances along the way. Little grunts and owws filtering back from up ahead told her that Harry was having an even harder time of it, tall and broad-shouldered as he was. He couldn't stand up straight even in the highest sections of the passage. Young Roba, sandwiched in between them, seemed to be the only one for whom the going was relatively smooth.

 "I've been through some pretty nasty tunnels in my time, but this one takes the biscuit!" she muttered under her breath as her hair caught on yet another snag. Jerking her head to pull it free, she managed to pitch face-first into some kind of alien cobweb, and had to bite back a yelp of surprise and disgust as she spluttered her way free of it.

 It would be worth it in the end, she promised herself as she brushed the sticky strands off her face with a grimy hand. As long as there was a way through, as long as this damp, dirty little passageway led them to the Doctor, it would be worth it, because they simply had to find the Doctor – and find some way to free the people of this world, as well, for that matter. If crawling through this poky, dirty little hole was what it took, then so be it.

 Oh, but it was horrible, though.

 "Are you all right?" a small voice whispered alongside her, and she realised that Roba had crept back to see why she'd stopped. She mustered up a smile for the boy – which he probably couldn't see anyway, it was so dark – and assured him that she was fine, just catching her breath. He promptly disappeared again, and she could hear him hissing "she's all right," somewhere up ahead, closely followed by a guarded 'hush' from Harry.

 Sucking in a deep breath, Sarah pressed on, squeezing around a narrow bend in the tunnel into a slightly wider section, where Harry and Roba were waiting for her to catch up.

 It was brighter here, she realised in dull surprise: still very murky but light enough that she could see Harry lift a finger to his lips to warn her not to make any sound. Then he moved aside and she saw that they were almost out at last, their tunnel tapering away once more to become a narrow fissure through which light was filtering from some kind of cavern that lay beyond. It would just about be wide enough to squeeze through, she realised with relief as she pressed herself against the rocky wall to cautiously peer through the gap into what looked like some kind of vast garage or aircraft hangar, carved out of sheer rock.

 The fissure that formed the entrance to their tunnel was quite high up, which was probably at least part of the reason it hadn't been barred – after all, who in their right mind would ever even dream of trying to get in or out this way? The aliens must have dismissed it as a useful ventilation shaft and thought no more of it, which was a stroke of luck for them…if they could only manage to get down safely, without being seen.

 It would be an awful drop from up here, but it might just about be do-able – it had to be, because there was no other way.

 There didn't seem to be anyone around. Sarah turned back to Harry. "Coast's clear," she murmured and he nodded. If they wanted to make a move, and they did, now was the time to do it.

 Harry went first, since he was the tallest, awkwardly squeezing through the narrow fissure, gingerly lowering himself until he was hanging by his fingertips, and then dropping the last few feet to the floor below. He landed with quite a clatter, grabbing onto the wall to keep from pitching over, and then froze, waiting to see if anyone had heard.

 It all seemed quiet still, although for how much longer was anyone's guess. Sarah sent Roba down next, almost cringing: it was such a horribly long drop for such a small boy. But although Harry could be clumsy enough on occasion, he was generally reliable when it really mattered. He caught the boy easily and set him gently down, then reached up to help Sarah as she took her turn.

 As she made her highly undignified descent, scraping both elbow and chin against the rocky wall in the process, Sarah was only grateful that she was wearing trousers rather than a skirt, and took comfort in the fact that Harry was even more embarrassed than she was by the hands-everywhere manoeuvring involved in helping her down.

 All right, so they were down. Sarah dabbed at the scrape on her chin as she gazed around curiously. So where were they?

 "Sky carts!" Roba's voice was no more than a whisper as the boy cowered behind Harry at the sight of the dreaded vehicles, parked in neat rows near what must be the end of that main tunnel they'd seen earlier. There were other tunnels, smaller tunnels, opening out of the vast cavern at odd intervals, while assorted bits and pieces of equipment were scattered around here and there; apart than being carved out of rock, it really did resemble nothing so much as the workshop at Sarah's local garage…except that over at the far end of the cavern there was…

 "A spaceship," she gasped in surprise, gazing over at the enormous rocket, which sat beneath those giant trapdoors they'd seen out on the mountainside. Then she wondered why she was so surprised; the sky raider aliens had to have travelled to this planet somehow, after all, so of course they would have a ship. She just hadn't expected to find it underground. It wasn't very big, though, not to have transported all these vehicles and equipment and everything, so what did that mean – were there other ships somewhere else, or…?

 "Shh," Harry suddenly hissed. "Someone's coming."

 They just barely had time to take cover before one of the aliens came into sight, sauntering over to a control panel near to the parked sky carts.

 So that was what the sky raiders looked like. While Roba cringed in fear, hiding his face in Harry's shoulder, Sarah stared in fascination at the odd-looking alien with its beaky face, misshapen bald head and leathery yellow skin, like nothing she'd ever seen before – and she'd seen a fair few varieties of alien in her time. It pressed a few switches on the control panel and a groaning sound ensued from somewhere down the main tunnel – those heavy doors opening, perhaps, Sarah wondered, and moments later her guess was confirmed as another sky cart flew out of the tunnel to land nearby.

 "About time," the first alien snapped in a scratchy, nasal voice as two more clambered out of the sky cart's front cab. "You're the last – what kept you?"

 "This."

 The back of the sky cart was directly facing their hiding place, which meant they had a perfect view into the vehicle as its rear door was opened. Sarah had to clamp a hand over her own mouth to keep from crying out in surprise when she saw what was inside.

 It was the TARDIS – they'd found and captured the TARDIS.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 The domestic sector of the moon base wasn't quite as deserted as it had been previously, now that there was an alarm blaring to trigger a full-scale search for a missing prisoner.

 Speaking as that missing prisoner, the Doctor thought it was most unhelpful of them to fill the hallways like this just when he was trying to move around without being seen. He had a lot to do, if he wanted to free the Lindosian slaves, see off the Tarsin invaders, and find his lost friends, and all this ducking and diving to avoid detection wasn't making any of it any easier.

 Freeing the Lindosian slaves and ridding their world of the Tarsin invaders was his top priority, it had to be…but the absence of his human friends was nagging at him now. Quite aside from missing having someone to talk to, which he did, he was growing rather concerned that something might have happened to them, out of his sight for so long on a strange world – humans were so prone to finding trouble wherever they went.

 Then again, he mused with some regret as he surreptitiously crept out of his latest hiding place and ventured around a corner only to find himself face to face with a rather startled but heavily armed Tarsin, Harry and Sarah might very well say just the same thing about him, if they could only see him now.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 


	3. Capture

 The Doctor had faster reflexes than the Tarsin guard who'd spotted him, just barely. He flicked the end of his scarf at the man even as his gun arm rose, catching him by surprise and throwing him off balance just enough to give the Doctor a second or two to start running.

 The guard recovered disappointingly quickly, shouting loudly into his headset to request backup even as he began to shoot.

 Dodging the blaster bolt, which singed his sleeve, the Doctor skidded around a corner and kept running.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 "You're ordered back up to moon base," the ground control sky raider informed the two who'd just returned from patrol. "They've let that alien escape and can't find it – they want all hands for the search."

 As the returning patrollers loudly expressed their discontent with this order, Sarah felt her eyes go wide. Tucked carefully away in their hiding place behind some equipment in a quiet corner, she gave Harry a quick poke in the ribs to see if he'd also grasped the meaning of what they'd just heard. An escaped alien – it had to be the Doctor. What other alien could it be? And 'up at moon base' meant…

 "The Doctor isn't here any more," she whispered, to be sure they were all on the same page.

 "Yes, I heard," Harry whispered back, slightly louder than she was comfortable with, so she shh'd him and then ignored the mildly exasperated look he shot at her in return, concentrated instead on trying to hear what the sky raiders were talking about now, in hopes of more clues as to the Doctor's whereabouts and how they might reach him.

 One of the patrollers was asking if 'the transport' was ready and the ground controller said that it was. "Last batch is already loaded – slim pickings this time, the boss won't be pleased. We're just waiting for you."

 "Best get moving, then," the second patroller drawled. "You've room for our prize, I take it?"

 "Get the hoist; you can sling it in the secondary hold."

 Roba wriggled himself in between Sarah and Harry, looking very small and very scared. "What are they saying?"

 Sarah was still trying to make sense of their conversation herself. "The TARDIS," she realised, watching the aliens carefully. "They're moving the TARDIS…into that ship. The spaceship, Harry – they're taking the TARDIS to the base where the Doctor is, the moon base."

 Harry lifted an eyebrow. "We'd better see if we can go with it, then."

 He made it sound so easy. It wasn't. They had to sneak from one end of the vast cavern to the other without being seen, and then wait, nerves jangling, for the sky raiders to turn their backs while the spaceship's hold door was open, so that they could sneak aboard and tuck themselves behind the stolen TARDIS, out of sight.

 Sarah gazed longingly at the TARDIS as they stepped into the cargo hold alongside it. If only they had the key, they could hide inside and know for certain that they were safe…but they didn't, it was with the Doctor. All they could do was tuck themselves behind it and hope for the best.

 Roba was all but hyperventilating by the time they were aboard and hidden, after he'd coped so well with everything their journey had thrown at them so far. Sarah remembered well what a shock it had been when she first glimpsed inside the TARDIS, how she'd felt the first time it took her into the future, and could only imagine how much worse the culture shock must be for Roba to walk into a place like this, littered with advanced technology, when he came from such a primitive little encampment – and worse again because he was already absolutely terrified of the sky raiders and their sky carts. He couldn't seem to stop shaking now that they were so close to the dread creatures, had even voluntarily boarded one of their vehicles, and kept whimpering and muttering his terror.

 "Shh, it's all right, shh, that's it – breathe." She cast anxious eyes around the bulk of the TARDIS toward the still open hold door, unable to see where the sky raiders were – if the creatures came back and found them now, it would be all over, and they couldn't afford to fail, not now they'd come this far. "Do something," she hissed at Harry, who, aside from awkwardly patting Roba's shoulder and 'there, there'-ing at him a bit, had simply taken a step back and let her get on with the business of soothing the boy, as if he thought she knew what she was doing.

 Harry waved his hands helplessly. "Such as?"

 "Well, you're supposed to be a doctor, aren't you?" Sarah was fairly certain that neither one of them knew all that much about children, but she would have thought that a trained doctor should have a better idea how to console the distressed than an investigative journalist did – bedside manner was usually his strong point, even if dealing with people on a less professional basis wasn't. Besides, he was the one Roba had really latched onto.

 A loud scraping, whining sound rang out – those heavy trap doors above the spaceship being opened, perhaps – and Roba moaned. "They'll find us, they'll find us!"

 "No they won't, not if we keep quiet." Sarah cast another nervous glance toward the still open hold door, beyond which the voices of the sky raiders could be heard once more, arguing about something. Wondering what in the world they were going to do if the boy couldn't pull himself together again, she looked at Harry. "Maybe we shouldn't have brought him."

 "Bit late for that, I'm afraid," Harry shrugged, as if she didn't already know that herself…but then Roba pulled away from them, suddenly very quiet and still, as if that exchange had broken through his panic where no amount of cajoling had worked.

 "Don't send me back," he pleaded. "I can be brave. Don't send me back."

 Harry ruffled the boy's hair and said, "Couldn't if we wanted to," in his heartiest voice, the one he used when he was out of his depth and knew it but still wanted to appear positive. Then Sarah heard sky raider voices getting closer once more, approaching the still open hold door.

 "Shh!" she hissed, grabbing a hand of each of them and gripping tight, trying not to even breathe; if they were found now, here, after all this…

 A moment later the hold door clanked shut and was sealed off with a loud hiss, and it was only then that Sarah thought to wonder if a cargo hold would remain pressurised and have a breathable atmosphere circulated while in transit to wherever the craft was going, because if it didn't then they could be in trouble.

 It was too late to worry about that, as well.

 They were on their way.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 "Stop there!"

 The Tarsin guards seemed to be everywhere, zeroing in on the Doctor's position now that he'd been sighted.

 He kept running. He was a big believer in speed of movement as a solution to potential captivity problems, however temporary that solution might be, and felt exceedingly grateful that this current body of his was so very fleet of foot.

 Fleetness of foot would only get him so far, however.

 And the Tarsins weren't exactly snails, either.

 He nimbly dodged a stray blaster bolt as he skidded around a corner ahead of the pursuing guards…only to find more up ahead, cutting off his escape. As he reacted to this unfortunate development, mind racing to come up with an alternate way out, he zigged when he should have zagged, and another blaster bolt caught him square between the shoulder blades.

 His legs crumpled beneath him.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 The journey lasted just long enough for all three of them to fall asleep, now that at long last they had nothing more to do but sit and wait it out.

 It felt like mere moments later that Harry was woken with a start by a sudden jolt and the muffled sound of voices and movement somewhere nearby. He blinked muzzily at his strange surroundings, disoriented, while recent memories jostled for attention: the planet, the Doctor's disappearance, the aliens, the long night spent scrambling through the hills. They'd snuck aboard the sky raider spacecraft, and….

 It had just landed.

 He lurched upright in sudden panic, dislodging Sarah and Roba, who'd both fallen asleep on top of him, and hurried over to the door, which had a kind of window set into it. It was heavily encrusted with grime but he could just about make out the smooth metallic walls and floors of the spacecraft hangar beyond, with several of the sky raider aliens bustling around in purposeful fashion.

 "What's going on?" Sarah was suddenly at his elbow, craning her neck as she reached up on tiptoes trying to see through the window, which was too high for her.

 "We've landed," Harry explained, but the way Sarah rolled her eyes told him that wasn't quite what she'd meant.

 "Yes, I gathered that, but out there, what's going on out there?"

 He tried wiping a bit of grime off the window with his sleeve, without much success, and looked again. "Jolly difficult to see. They seem to be unloading another section of the vessel – it's…oh." He stopped short in dismay as he saw what kind of cargo was being brought out

 "What?"

 "Should have guessed, really." Roba had come alongside them, looking rather pale and drawn, and Harry eyed the boy anxiously, wondering how he might react to this development.

 "Should have guessed what? Harry, would you stop being cryptic and tell me what you see," Sarah snapped.

 He glanced out of the window again at the bedraggled bunch of natives huddled together alongside the vessel, cowering in fear from the gun-wielding sky raiders. "It's people, Sarah. They had people in the other cargo hold – natives, you understand."

 "My mother," Roba burst out, almost frantic.

 "Well, I don't know –"

 "Let me see! Let me see!" Roba hurled himself at the door and scrabbled at the smooth metal, trying to climb up to the window to see for himself.

 All they'd need was for the sky raiders to hear a disturbance in here and come to investigate. Harry quickly pulled the boy away from the door, clamping a hand over his mouth, while Sarah hissed, "Shh, we have to be quiet, Roba – we can't let them know we're here."

 "But my mother…"

 "I know, I know." She bent double to look the boy in the eyes, gripping his arms tightly. "We'll look for her, Roba, we will, I promise, but we can't let them find us here – you understand?"

 The boy struggled for a moment longer, but then went limp, defeated, and his chin dropped to his chest. "I understand."

 Harry released him, gave him a pat on the shoulder, and went back to the door. "I don't think anyone heard," he said, squinting to make out through the grime what was happening out there, as the sorry band of captive natives was herded through a doorway leading out of the main hangar. "They seem to be taking the prisoners away…wait, get back!"

 Spotting a couple of the remaining sky raiders heading toward their cargo hold, he span away from the window and pressed himself flat against the wall, while Sarah quickly caught hold of Roba and pulled him against the wall on the other side of the door.

 Just in time. With a whoosh and a hiss, the door began to open. Harry met Sarah's eyes, the panic in them a match for his own – there was simply nowhere they could hide, they'd never make it back behind the TARDIS in time. The moment the sky raiders set foot through the door, they were done for.

 "…You see?" one of the aliens was saying as the door opened. "Want it unloaded?"

 Harry held his breath and tensed up, ready to take action the moment the aliens stepped across the threshold. Perhaps if he could take down the first as it entered, and he'd have surprise on his side at any rate, they might stand at least some kind of chance against the other…

 It seemed an eternity before the other one replied. "Later – see what the Proctor wants done with it."

 "Back to it, then…"

 The voices moved away and drifted off into the distance, before fading away completely, and Harry started to breathe again.

 "Oh, thank God." Sarah had her arms around a very wide-eyed Roba, holding him tight. "I thought we'd had it!"

 Harry risked a quick peek around the edge of the door. No sign of movement. He ventured a little further and stuck his head out for a proper look around. "All clear, I think."

 "I'd be happier if you were certain." Sarah pressed alongside him in the doorway to see for herself. "Yes, all clear."

 "That's what I said." Harry stepped down from the ship and gazed around in wonder at the pristine spacecraft hangar, glisteningly bright and bristling with unfathomable technology – quite a contrast from the dank cavern they'd taken off from. "I say, this is a bit of a step up from that last place."

 Roba caught hold of his sleeve again, staring wide-eyed in bewilderment at the dazzling array of equipment that surrounded them. "What do we do now?"

 Harry looked at Sarah to see if she had any bright ideas. "The prisoners were taken that way," he offered, pointing toward the doorway they'd been taken through.

 "My mother is that way?" Roba's face lit up with sudden hope.

 "Well, I can't say for sure …"

 "I think we should split up," Sarah suddenly declared, and Harry frowned. He didn't consider himself to be an imaginative man, but he could imagine all kinds of ways that could go wrong.

 "Oh, I don't think that's such a good idea, old…" he caught himself, "Sarah."

 "I'm not old, Harry, and I do," Sarah insisted. "Look, there are two exits from this area and no way of telling how big the whole complex is, or how long it'll take to search – we'll cover more ground if we split up. You know it makes sense. Look, you take Roba and follow the prisoners that way, look for his mother. And I'll try the other door and see if I can find the Doctor." She matched action to word, briskly heading in the direction she'd elected to explore herself.

 She was right, strategically speaking, the division of labour did make sense, but Harry still felt uneasy at the thought of letting her out of his sight. They'd already lost the Doctor, after all, and these things always did seem to have a way of getting worse before they got better. On the other hand, if there was one thing he'd learned since making Sarah's acquaintance, it was that she was perfectly capable of looking after herself – and fiercely resented any suggestion to the contrary. She would be fine.

 He was almost sure of it.

 "Sarah," he called after her. Already through the doorway, she turned to see what he wanted.

 "Yes?"

 "Don't move!" The shout rang out even as he opened his mouth to urge her to be careful. Harry had about half a second to see Sarah's eyes go wide and her mouth drop open in shock before she quickly dodged back behind the door frame, while he whirled around, as Roba screamed and clutched at him, to see a pair of very fierce-looking sky raiders at the other doorway, levelling their guns at him.

 Harry raised his hands in surrender. He'd been right about things getting worse, then.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 Sarah pressed herself behind the doorframe and tried not to breathe as she attempted to see what was going on without being seen herself, the urge to rush futilely to the rescue wrestled into submission by the instinct to _not get caught_.

 "So the other creature was lying," one of the sky raiders snarled at Harry, back in the spacecraft hangar just beyond the doorway she was concealed behind. "How many more of you are there?"

 Sarah risked another peek to see that Harry was trying very hard to stay between Roba and the guards, as well as to keep both guards in his line of sight, which was easier said than done since one had moved behind him and was peering suspiciously into the open cargo hold of the spaceship. "I'm alone, I can assure you," he stammered.

 "So the other one said." The sky raider leaned in close, pressed its gun right up under his chin, forcing his head back. "No more lies! How many more of you are there? The truth!"

 Harry wouldn't give her away; Sarah knew that like she knew her own name. If they decided not to take his word for it, though, and came searching, she'd be found in an instant – not to mention if anyone came along this hallway – yet she didn't dare make a run for it. If she moved, she'd be seen, she was sure of it. Besides, she couldn't just abandon Harry and Roba to their fate…even if she simply couldn't think of anything she could do to help them just now.

 She pressed back against the wall again while out in the hangar Harry firmly repeated, "I'm alone," sounding much less uncertain this time. "Now, there really is no need for all –"

 "You will be silent, spy!"

 "Spy?" Harry sounded bewildered. "I'm no spy –"

 "Proctor Silrin will get the truth out of you, one way or another. Talib, take the mutt and put it with the others –"

 "No!" The shout was uncharacteristically fierce for Harry, and Sarah risked another peek at the standoff. Harry had a firm grip on Roba's arm, the terrified boy clinging to him for dear life, while his other hand was outstretched to ward off, or possibly placate, the gun-wielding aliens confronting him. "No, the boy is my responsibility, he stays with me," he insisted, a lot more forcefully than Sarah might have expected from him, and one of the sky raiders lashed out furiously, striking him across the face with its weapon and knocking him to the ground.

 "You do not make demands!"

 Sarah had to press a hand to her mouth to stop herself crying out and cringed in expectation of the worst as the creature raised the gun once more…but then the other one intervened, speaking up for the first time as it hauled Harry back to his feet, and she could breathe again. "Oh, leave it, Nart. If the alien wants to keep the mutt, let the Proctor deal with it. Come on, move, both of you."

 The sky raiders pushed and shoved Harry and Roba out through the other doorway and away, and Sarah let her head drop back against the wall, tried to breathe, tried to think – what to do, what to do? Stay, follow, keep searching for the Doctor…?

 She had to follow them. Of course she did, however great the risk. The Doctor could be anywhere, but if she kept Harry in sight, maybe she'd get the chance to help him escape somehow – if she was really lucky, they might even lead her to the Doctor, killing two birds with one stone.

 That was settled, then.

 If there'd been anyone around still, she was sure they'd be able to hear the way her heart was pounding as she crept out of her hiding place and hurried back through the hangar to the other doorway. She cautiously peered through and then ventured into the corridor beyond.

 Harry and the others were already out of sight.

 She tiptoed along, jumping at every shadow and every sound, expecting more sky raiders to descend on her at any moment, but her luck seemed to be in, somehow…until she reached a junction, with absolutely nothing whatsoever to indicate which way the others had gone.

 She'd lost them.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 Proctor Silrin fumed inwardly at the waste of his time as he stalked into the detention cell to find the re-captured alien creature slumped unconscious on the floor, with no less than four guards standing over it, weapons at the ready, lest it pull off another miraculous escape should they turn their backs for an instant.

 Silrin still wanted to know how it had achieved that.

 He dismissed two of the guards, considering such overkill to be wasteful when they had other work to be getting on with, and ordered the remaining two to secure the creature to the sole chair in the room and then search its pockets. There would be a tool of some kind, he was sure of it, used to trip the lock. Once it was found and confiscated, they could get on with the business of finding out why the creature was here and what its plans were.

 And if the device proved marketable, so much the better – anything to improve Silrin's standing with the Board of Directors, who made such demands and had no concept of what it took to keep this operation running profitably, maintaining maximum security with a bare minimum of staff.

 The search took quite some time. A small bag containing oddly shaped, sticky, gum-like objects, a length of string, a compact spherical object made of leather, a half-eaten piece of fruit, a handful of what appeared to be gemstones, some kind of wire-cutting device…the contents of the creature's pockets were as bizarre and inexplicable as the peculiar-looking creature itself.

 "Sir!" One of the guards spoke up just as the search was concluded, lifting a hand to his headset as he listened intently. "Another alien has been found – in the loading bay."

 Another one! What were they all doing, what kind of plan was afoot – and how badly would it reflect on him if it weren't nipped in the bud, fast?

 "Have it brought here at once," Silrin ordered.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 Talib had been operating undercover at the Lu-Corps moon base for quite some time now, painstakingly gathering evidence…for which he had no outlet, however, since he'd had next to no contact with his home agency in all that time. All communication to and from the homeworld was tightly restricted and closely monitored. He'd been completely alone, all this time, waiting for an opportunity to pass that evidence on – for a signal that the next stage of the operation was ready to commence, that his allies had made some kind of breakthrough. And now it seemed that the moment was at hand, at long last.

 Because there had to be a reason these aliens were here, he just knew it: some kind of partnership struck by his associates back home, perhaps, now that Tarsin trade routes were bringing contact with other civilised worlds – all part of a larger scheme to finally bring down the corporation, freeing both trade and the wretched, downtrodden natives of this world with one stroke. He simply couldn't fathom what that new plan might be, though, or what possible purpose might be served by the aliens allowing themselves to be captured like this. The first he had supposed to be an accident, and had wracked his brains trying without success to think of some way he could aid the creature's escape without giving himself away, but now this second creature had appeared and likewise been captured at once…it had to be deliberate, surely, part of some wider scheme that had yet to be communicated to him.

 Perhaps because there had been no opportunity for such communication.

 Talib pondered this possibility for a moment longer, eyeing the alien's defensive posture and protective grip on the little native boy as they marched along, and then glanced speculatively at his partner. He'd maintained his cover for so very long, he didn't dare risk blowing it, not now, not yet. But there might be another way.

 He spoke up quickly, before he could second guess himself. "I'll take it from here, Nart – you might as well get back to work."

 Nart looked doubtful. "You sure?"

 "These two won't give me any trouble…will you?" Talib hefted his gun meaningfully at their prisoners, and the little mutt – or native, rather, but it was hard to keep from falling into the common lingo he heard around him each and every day – squeaked and clutched at the alien creature's arm more tightly than ever.

 It was hard to tell what the alien might be thinking – such a strange looking creature, even more so than the natives: all pink-skinned and furry-headed. Catching its eye, Talib felt a pang of anxiety that perhaps he'd miscalculated. The creature was tall and quite powerfully built; if it tried to take advantage of the reduced guard to attempt an escape, it might just succeed – after all, Talib could not risk using punitive force, not against a fellow agent, even if that agent was unaware of his identity. And then he would be blamed and he still wouldn't know.

 He was fairly certain that the creature was thinking about it, at the very least…but it wouldn't really try, though, surely, not with the little mutt clinging on to it like that. Would it?

 Nart seemed convinced that the alien was harmless, or at least was anxious enough to escape escort duty not to care, for he was quick to take up the invitation and head back to the loading bay, leaving Talib alone with the alien and the mutt. Still unsure whether or not the creature might attempt to escape as soon as they were alone, he anxiously waited until he was sure Nart was out of earshot and then quickly spoke up, without stopping to think about what he should say. "So what's the plan?"

 The question that came out was a little blunter than he'd intended. The alien stopped short and blinked at him. "I beg your pardon?"

 "Keep walking!" Talib hissed, and then, worried, said, "Didn't the agency send you? You were told to expect a local contact, yes?"

 The alien scrubbed a hand through the springy brown fur that covered its head and the flesh around its eyes wrinkled in a manner that seemed to suggest perplexity. "I'm sorry, old chap," it said. "I haven't the foggiest what you're on about. Perhaps it might help if you put the gun down and let us go."

 Talib was confused – and running out of time. They had almost reached their destination, and he daren't delay, not when the Proctor was expecting them. He'd assumed the creature's capture had somehow been part of the plan, but now the wretched thing was asking to be released, yet didn't seem to recognise him as the local contact…or at least wasn't willing to acknowledge that it had expected him.

 "No, you're right," he backtracked, thinking that perhaps he understood the reason for this reticence. "Perhaps it's best not to tell me. The less we know about each other the better."

 The alien frowned again. "I'm afraid I still don't quite understand."

 "Just know that I'm ready," Talib said. "When the time comes – you just have to give me a sign. I have the evidence. I'm ready."

 "Ready for what? Look, you're the one with the gun," the alien protested. "And all this really isn't necessary, you know. We haven't done anything – well, we did stowaway, I suppose, but no harm done, eh. Why not just let us be on our way?"

 It was good, Talib had to give it that – if he didn't know better, he really would think that the creature's confusion was genuine. Perhaps he should let it go – perhaps the alien really hadn't intended this capture after all and allowing it to escape would be the best way he could aid the mission.

 But they were almost at the detention cell now and the Proctor was expecting them. If he released the alien, his part in the escape would be known, there would be consequences.

 He'd been prepared to live with consequences since accepting this assignment, but only in aid of the mission, and if the alien would not acknowledge him, would not explain what was planned, how was he to know what to do for the best? Until he knew for sure, he could not dare break his cover, just in case.

 If only the alien would trust him enough to confirm just what the plan was.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 Harry had been waiting for the world – or, more accurately, the universe – to start making sense again more or less ever since his first encounter with the Doctor, back at UNIT, when all this had begun. He'd reached the conclusion that he could be waiting for quite some time and decided to simply roll with the punches, as it were, around about the time he opened a cupboard door on a deserted space station thousands of years in the future and the desiccated corpse of an eight-foot tall cockroach fell out, which was something that nothing in all his years of medical and naval training could have prepared him for. Since then he'd more or less come to terms with the peculiarity and frequent incomprehensibility of life with the Doctor, but even now, after everything he'd seen – perhaps because of everything he'd seen – there were still moments when he found himself longing for the feel of solid ground beneath his feet once more, so to speak.

 This was one of them. The sky raider guard clearly expected him to know what it was talking about, but the creature appeared to be speaking in a kind of code for which he simply did not have the key. For one glorious moment, however, he almost believed that he'd somehow persuaded the alien to down weapons and allow him and Roba to escape…

 And then a door opened a little further down the corridor, and that was the end of that. The guard was suddenly all brisk efficiency again, and they were ushered, still at gunpoint, into a rather Spartan little room – the brig, presumably – where a very official looking sky raider glowered down its beak at him, noticed Roba still clinging to his arm, and glared at the guard. "What is this mutt doing here?"

 They should never have brought the boy here, into this – what had they been thinking? It was done, though, for better or for worse, and having brought him here Harry was responsible for his safety. He certainly wasn't about to let these creatures take Roba away, guns or no, and prepared to argue the point again…but then as the guard snapped to attention and began to explain, while Roba cowered behind his back, clinging on tighter than a limpet, all at once the sky raiders and their guns were no longer the centre of Harry's attention because he'd seen who else was in the room, slumped shackled to a chair.

 "Doctor!"

 He started forward, an instinctive reflex to check on his unconscious friend…but the nearest guard promptly yanked him back, every weapon in the room was instantly trained on him and the official-looking sky raider furiously snapped, "Hold! Do not move."

 Deciding that discretion was probably the better part of valour here, Harry sighed and stepped back, raising his hands in surrender once more.

 "I see that you do not deny the connection to your associate, spy." The officer glowered snootily down its beak at him once more. "A wise decision. I am Proctor Silrin of Tarse. You will speak when spoken to and answer all questions. What is your purpose here?"

 "Here?" Harry floundered, unsure if this Proctor Silrin meant either the planet or the moon base, or what the safest answer would be either way. Mindful of the guns aimed at his head, he opted for the simplest answer. "Well, I was looking for my friend there, as it happens."

 The alien's eyes narrowed. "And what is your friend's purpose here?"

 "He wasn't exactly given much choice, was he – your men brought him."

 "I do not speak of his capture!" Silrin snapped, and Roba let out a little yelp and hid behind Harry's back again, clutching at the hem of his jacket. "I speak of your purpose on this world, at this time – you are spies, admit that you are spies, sent to destroy this corporation."

 "I'm no spy. I'm an officer in Her Majesty's Navy!" Harry indignantly protested, reaching behind him to give Roba's shoulder a little squeeze. It was the only comfort he had to offer.

 "An enemy agent," Silrin coolly insisted. "And you will tell me your purpose here, one way or another. I demand that –"

 The sudden blare of an alarm cut across his demand, and Harry's heart skipped a beat. What if it meant that Sarah had been sighted, or even caught? One of them had to remain free, surely.

 "Sir." One of the guards had a hand pressed to the device it wore over its head, a bit like the head bands little girls wore, with an arm that stretched around near to its beak – some kind of miniature radio, it seemed. "There's been another cave-in, shaft four – supervisor asks how you'd like to proceed?"

 Silrin growled. "Must I do everything around here? Very well, secure the prisoners. I will continue this interview later."

 As Silrin swept out of the room, one of the guards quickly cuffed Harry's wrist to one end of what appeared to be some kind of heating device rather like a radiator, while Roba was tied to the other end. Then they hurried after their superior and the door locked behind them with a click, leaving the prisoners alone.

 "Harry?" Roba quavered.

 "It's all right, Roba. Try not to worry, eh." The words were hollow, he knew – this had to be the boy's worst nightmare come true and as things stood Harry simply couldn't see a way out of it. The Doctor, though, he'd come up with something, of course he would – always did. Harry kept both eyes fixed on the man and tried stretching out with his free arm at the first sign that he seemed to be stirring…but it was no good, he couldn't reach. He tried calling instead. "Doctor – Doctor, can you hear me?"

 Seconds ticked by with no response, but at long last the Doctor slowly peeled one eye open and peered blearily at him for a moment. Then the other eye popped open and a broad grin spread across his face. "Harry Sullivan! What are you doing here?"

 Harry couldn't help grinning himself, the relief was so immense. "Looking for you, actually," he said. "Though this isn't quite the reunion I'd hoped for, I will admit."

 "And my mother," Roba piped up. "We search for my mother, also."

 The Doctor leaned forward in his chair to regard the boy solemnly. "Harry," he said. "Either something very strange has happened to Sarah Jane, or you've made a new friend."

 "Oh yes, of course. This is Roba, Doctor. Roba, this is the Doctor – he's the friend Sarah and I were telling you about."

 Roba's nose wrinkled. "But you are doctor, no?" he protested.

 Had the boy really come this far without making the connection between Harry's professional title and the name of the friend he and Sarah had been searching for?

 "Well, yes. I'm a doctor," Harry awkwardly attempted to explain, slightly unnerved by the amusement playing across the Doctor's face. "But he's the Doctor. You see?"

 Roba shook his head.

 "Quite so," said the Doctor, suddenly serious again. "Harry, where's Sarah?"

 Well, that was the question. The last Harry had seen of Sarah was when she ducked out of sight behind a doorframe, back in that spacecraft hanger, and then he hadn't dared look in that direction again in case the guards noticed and went to investigate. Where she might be by now was anyone's guess. "She's still out there, somewhere, looking for you," he said. "I hope."

 "You hope…" The Doctor's stern, searching gaze drilled into him until he squirmed, but a moment later the mercurial Time Lord was full of bright, brisk cheer once more, just as if Sarah's whereabouts had never been a concern. "Right then, Harry – and Roba – I think it's about time we were getting out of here, don't you?"

 "Er, Doctor." Harry rattled the chain securing his wrist to the pipe.

 His own hands securely shackled behind his back, binding him to the chair, the Doctor shrugged. "Can you reach my boot, Harry?"

 "Your boot?"

 Without offering any explanation, the Doctor wriggled around in his chair and waved a leg in Harry's direction. Nonplussed, Harry obediently stretched out his free arm toward the leg – he could almost reach, almost…but not quite.

 The Doctor tried shuffling his chair an inch or two closer, while Harry pulled at the chain on his wrist and tried again, stretched as far as he could, gritting his teeth against the sting of the chain digging into his wrist and the throb of the not-yet-healed animal bite on his upper arm. His fingertips brushed against the bootlaces, against the smooth leather…there! He managed to catch hold of the lip of the boot and hung on.

 "All right," he panted. "What now?"

 "Reach inside, just at the back there – that's it."

 It was terribly awkward, trying to feel inside the boot without letting go of it, all with only one hand, at full stretch, but at last Harry found what he was looking for, what the Doctor wanted him to find, tucked behind the ankle bone. It was the sonic screwdriver. Of course. Pulling it out, he released his grip on the boot and felt strained muscles relax in relief.

 "Setting three should do it," the Doctor instructed, and Harry fumbled with the strange little device, trying to remember how the settings worked. He'd used it before, he should know this – ah, there it was.

 His chains sprang loose and he hurried to free the Doctor, in turn, and then took a moment to examine a gash on the side of his head, already well scabbed over. "You've been in the wars, Doctor."

 The Doctor lifted a finger to gently tap the blossoming bruise on Harry's own cheekbone, where the guard had hit him back in the spacecraft hangar. "So have you, it seems, Harry, but perhaps we could trade tales later. Your young friend there is waiting for you."

 "Oh yes." Satisfied that there seemed to be no serious damage – the Doctor really was impressively resilient – Harry moved to set the wide-eyed Roba free. The boy immediately caught at his sleeve once more as he turned to see the Doctor frowning disconsolately at an assortment of objects piled on a table in the corner.

 "The scoundrels," he indignantly grumbled as he began to stuff the oddments back into his pockets. "Searching me while I was unconscious – if they wanted me to turn out my pockets, they'd only to ask! Here, have a jelly baby."

 "Jolly good luck you had the sonic screwdriver in your boot, then," Harry remarked, taking a sweet for himself and one for Roba, who peered at it in confusion before popping it into his mouth in imitation of him. No sweets on Lindos, of course.

 The Doctor winked at him. "Precaution, Harry – I knew they wouldn't let me get away with it a second time. Now, are you going to open that door, or are you waiting for the guards to come back and do it for you?"

 "Ah. Yes." Harry eyed the door dubiously, and then peered down at the sonic screwdriver in his hand, wondering if the same setting would work on a door lock as handcuffs.

 It did.

 The Doctor beamed, clapping a friendly hand down on young Roba's shoulder. "Well done, Harry – after you."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 Sarah ducked behind a stanchion as another group of sky raiders jogged past. They seemed to be everywhere since that alarm went off – some kind of emergency, she gathered from the snatches of conversation she'd heard, a tunnel collapse in a mine shaft. But this base was on one of the moons, wasn't it? What could they be mining for up here, and why? It didn't make sense.

 So she'd given up her search for Harry and the Doctor, for the time being, in favour of following along in the direction of the bustle, in fits and starts to avoid being seen, in hopes of finding out a bit more about what was going on up here. The combination of native prisoners, mines and a tunnel collapse was conjuring up all kinds of unpleasant images in her mind and she kept picturing Roba's face if anything had happened to his mother, couldn't stop thinking about old Caran, back at the encampment, and the rest of those broken down people, so helpless and defeated and grief-stricken. The fate of the captured natives had been abstract, up until now, but listening to the passing sky raiders with their talk of mines and cave-ins, what became of them all up here was starting to become horribly clear and the cruelty and the injustice of it burned away at her. Something simply had to be done about it.

 She just didn't know what, yet.

 The Doctor would be full of ideas, of course, but there was no telling where he was, so she was just going to have to carry on and do whatever she could without him…which would be a whole lot easier if all these sky raiders didn't keep getting in the way.

 Another group passed, but this group was different to the others she'd seen. They were going in a different direction, for one thing – away from the disaster, it seemed, instead of toward it, because these sky raiders weren't alone. They were herding a group of natives and it was the most pitiful sight Sarah had ever seen. The slaves were filthy and frightened, broken and bleeding, supporting one another, carrying their wounded – and they might as well have been no more than animals for all the guards seemed to care.

 How could anyone treat sentient beings in this way?

 She watched, fuming, as the slaves were herded back along the corridor and around a corner, and then reversed direction to tiptoe after them, peering around the corner just in time to see the group disappearing through a doorway.

 There was nowhere to take cover between here and that door.

 Sarah hesitated, peering around in all directions. There was no one in sight. If she wanted to find out more about the slaves and their condition, this was her chance and it was now or never, quick, before someone else came along and her luck ran out.

 She made a run for it, scurrying as silently as she could around the corner and down the corridor to pull up short at the doorway before cautiously peering around it. Inside was what looked like a large vestibule area with several more doors branching off it, all closed except one. She could hear movement and voices coming from the open doorway and ventured closer to try to listen.

 This was a kind of barrack block for the slaves, she realised, holding her breath as she leaned toward the open door, catching just a glimpse of the rudimentary billet beyond before quickly pulling back, not wanting to be seen. Then a sound from back out in the corridor froze her in her tracks, just for a second, and she wildly cast around for a hiding place, darted behind a bulky cabinet just in time.

 The latest sky raiders to arrive seemed to be medics, under orders to 'salvage what they could' of the injured slaves. The guards left them to it and wandered back out into the vestibule, chattering idly among themselves about the delay and the instability of the seam and the demand that it be shored up and the slaves put back to work as quickly as possible.

 "Might as well feed that new batch while we're at it, then," one of them suggested in off-hand tones. "They'll be taking the next shift."

 They began to bustle around the vestibule gathering supplies, and Sarah scarcely even dared breathe, expecting to be spotted at any moment. At last they disappeared into another of the dormitories off the vestibule area, and she risked a quick peep around the corner of her hiding place.

 There was a clear path back to the exit and suddenly the only thought in her mind was to get out of here as quickly as she could, before she was found, and go looking for the Doctor again – rescue him if he needed rescuing, which he probably would, he usually did – so that they could find some way of putting a stop to all this.

 She crept out from behind the cabinet and began to slink toward the exit, only to hear voices out in the hallway beyond, blocking her path – and then more voices from the medics in the first dormitory, on their way back out here again.

 She would never make it back to her hiding place in time. There was only one path left open to her.

 She ducked through the other open doorway, into the second billet, where the sky raider guards were busy feeding the slaves with their backs to the door, and dived under the nearest bunk.

 Moments later, the guards turned and walked out of the room, locking the door behind them.

 She was trapped.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 


	4. Alliance

Sarah couldn't decide who she should be worried about the most: the Doctor, who'd been missing for such a horribly long time now, Harry and Roba, who she'd seen marched away at gunpoint – or herself. Lying flat on the floor beneath a flimsy bunk in the slave barracks, as the door clicked locked behind the sky raider guards, she rested her forehead against the cool metal surface of the floor tiles and squeezed her eyes shut, focused on breathing to calm herself down. She needed to clear her mind, needed to think. How did she get out of this one? What would the Doctor do?

 She opened her eyes again – and almost jumped out of her skin, because there was another pair of eyes looking back at her. They were wide, cat-like eyes set in an ash-grey face, with charcoal-grey markings around the forehead and cheekbones that reminded her of the pattern of spots around the face of a giraffe she'd seen in the zoo. Wild silver hair stood out from the head like the seeds in a dandelion clock, looking almost like a halo with the light shining through from behind it.

 It was one of the Lindosian natives, a female, bending to peer beneath the bunk.

 Well, if she'd been seen, there was no point hiding any longer. As she gingerly crawled out from her hiding place, Sarah offered the woman what she hoped would be taken as a friendly smile, casting an anxious glance back toward the door, half-expecting the guards to return at any moment. The slaves wouldn't give her away, would they?

 "Hello, I'm sorry to barge in like this," she ventured. "Please don't tell them I'm here."

 There must have been several dozen Lindosians in the room altogether, but all except the one were making sure to keep their distance, huddling together in small groups here and there, looking very lost and very afraid.

 The woman facing Sarah looked frightened as well, but at least she hadn't backed away. "You are not a sky raider," she tentatively offered.

 Sarah seized upon the opening. "No. No, I'm not. My name is Sarah, and I'm…well, I was trying to find a way of getting you all away from here." And the irony of that was something she hoped she'd have a chance to appreciate later. She cast another rueful glance at the locked door. "But as you can see, it isn't going very well for me, I'm afraid."

 The woman tilted her head slightly to one side, looking wary still but also curious. "You are the Doctor's friend."

 It was a statement, not a question. Sarah was flabbergasted. "How did you…?"

 The woman gestured at her own face and then waved a hand toward Sarah's. "I see that you look like him. Not like us. Not like sky raiders. And he told me of his friends, left behind when he was taken. So I know that you are one of them."

 "You've seen him? Do you know where he is?" The words came tumbling out so fast they almost fell over one another, frantic. She hadn't realised just how worried she was, or how desperate she was to find him, not until this moment, confirmation that he was alive at least – or had been. If this woman had seen him, talked to him, she might know more…but a second later that sudden burst of hope was dashed as the woman shook her head.

 "No. They took him away. They brought us here and left us – oh, for many hours – and for what?" She shrugged eloquently, and Sarah could see the tinge of barely restrained panic in her eyes. "They do not say. They take us from our people, we don't want to go, still they take us, and for why? What do they want? Why do they take us?"

 Well, Sarah knew the answer to that one. "I think they want you to work in their mines."

 The alien woman's brow wrinkled in a very human-looking expression of perplexity. "Work in…what?"

 "A mine." The word didn't seem to mean very much to the Lindosian, though, and Sarah cast around for how to explain. "I mean… oh look, what's your name?"

 "Emera. I am Emera."

 It was a pretty name. Sarah smiled as she sat down on the nearest bunk, gestured for the other woman to do likewise. "I don't really know very much more than you do," she admitted, glancing around as some of the others ventured a little closer, listening intently to what she had to say. "But I do know that this base is up on one of the moons…"

 She could see that she'd lost her audience already.

 "You know, the moons – you can see them in the sky."

 Bewilderment was written all over the faces of the natives surrounding her.

 "There are four moons." It was a teenage boy who spoke up, a little older than Roba, long-legged and skinny with sticky-out ears and anxious eyes. "The moons are in the sky. No man can reach them there."

 "But your sky raiders can. You know they can, that's why you call them sky raiders, isn't it, because they come from the sky? They have spaceships…" Another word that meant nothing to the Lindosians; it was all so much harder to explain than Sarah had expected. Her head was aching, lack of sleep and lack of food with a surfeit of stress to boot, making it hard to find the right words to make them understand. "Like – like flying carts, very special flying carts. They can travel all the way up to the moons, high up in the sky. That's where we are right now."

 But telling them that was a mistake. They were horrified, noisily so – worse than Roba's panic attack when they'd snuck aboard the spaceship. Sarah cast frantic glances toward the door as she pleaded for calm. If any guards were around, how could they help but hear such a disturbance?

 "Why?" There were tears in Emera's eyes. "Why do they take us into the sky, trap us here away from soil and sun?"

 "Because they want you to work in their mines – oh, but you don't know what mines are," Sarah remembered, tried again to think how to explain. "That means digging. They want you to work for them, digging into the ground for something. And soon – they have other slaves, in other rooms, but they want you to start work next. I heard them say so. They could come back at any moment."

 "Digging? But why? For what?"

 It was a good question. "I don't know."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 "Lupium, Harry, a lupium mine," said the Doctor, throwing a loose end of his scarf over his shoulder as he hurried furtively along.

 "I've never heard of it."

 "Well, you wouldn't have, no, since there's none to be found on Earth – or anywhere else in your galaxy, for that matter. It's a mineral, an energy source, and there's rather a rich vein of it running through this moon." He paused to peer through the handy viewing pane of another door – no, nothing in there.

 "Oh, I see. So these sky raider creatures –"

 "Tarsins, Harry."

 "Tarsins, then – they're bringing the natives up here for slave labour in this mine?"

 "Yes, exactly, it's outrageous. Do you know, Harry," the Doctor decided that he wasn't prepared to go on another step until he got this off his chest, "This really must be the most boring space station it's ever been my misfortune to set foot upon – and I've seen some spectacularly dull ones in my time." He shook his head sadly. "Just look at these corridors – how's a fugitive supposed to find his way around here? It really is most inconsiderate of our hosts, don't you think?"

 "Well, at least there doesn't seem to be anyone about," Harry offered.

 "Yes, so where are they all? That's another point." As they reached the end of the dimly-lit hallway, he paused again to peer into another room; it was in darkness, but his night vision was excellent enough to tell him that it was merely a store cupboard: nothing useful in there. "A place for everything and everything in its place," he loftily proclaimed, "Which is all well and good so long as you know where that place is, which I don't, unfortunately. All clear up ahead?"

 Just ahead of him, Harry cautiously peered around the corner, his small Lindosian shadow clinging tightly to his sleeve, and then looked back with a nod. "Yes, all clear."

 "On we go, then."

 The Doctor was feeling better already. Oh, he had something of a splitting headache, to be sure, the inevitable consequence of two stun gun blasts combined with a minor head injury. Still, he was free once more with no alarms currently blaring, no guards anywhere in sight, and 50% of his human friends now back where he could see them, safe and well if not entirely undamaged, all of which he felt was a net improvement on his situation.

 Sarah remained unaccounted for, of course, and one human prowling around this moon base alone was considerably more worrying than two humans wandering about the Lindosian hills together, but on the other hand they were at least all in the same place now, which improved their chances of finding one another tremendously. And it did make him feel so much better simply to have someone at his side once more to explain his thoughts to as he was thinking them. All in all he was inclined to feel well and truly heartened by this turn of events.

 Harry was frowning, though, as they cautiously proceeded. "So that's what they meant."

 "What's what who meant?"

 "That officer fellow who seems to be in charge, what's-his-name…?"

 "Silrin?" The Doctor hadn't been aware that Harry had met Proctor Silrin and wondered what else he'd missed during his recent spell of unconsciousness.

 "That's the chap. Well, he went haring off while we were in the brig because there'd been some kind of cave-in, apparently. Shaft four, I think they said. I suppose they were talking about this, er, lupium mine of yours, then."

 "Yes, I suppose they must have been," the Doctor indulgently agreed, amused as always by Harry's idiosyncratically roundabout way of puzzling through the obvious. So there'd been some kind of tunnel collapse in the mines, had there? That didn't say much for the standards of this company Silrin was so proud of – and was potentially quite concerning, if any slave workers had been caught up in it, so it was probably for the best that the boy Roba didn't seem to have grasped the implications. He filed the information away with everything else he'd learned so far and paused to peer through another door in passing.

 "I say, Doctor, what exactly are we looking for?" Harry rather belatedly asked, as if the thought had only just occurred to him.

 "A server room," the Doctor briskly explained, quickening his pace because this search was taking longer than he might have wished and their absence from that holding cell could be spotted at any moment. "I've an inkling of an idea, but I'll need access to the computer systems before we try talking to Silrin again – uninterrupted access, if at all possible."

 "A what room?"

 "Well, I suppose any console with access to the mainframe would do, really," he mused. "Just look out for machinery, Harry, or computers, anything like that."

 "Like this, you mean?"

 The Doctor spun around on his heel mid-stride and hurried over to look through the door Harry had indicated, just across the way. The darkness of the room was offset by the dull glow of luminescent fibres winding all through and around it, connected up to row upon row of computer banks, stacked high upon tall metal racks – the nerve centre of the moon base. A slow smile spread across his face. "Exactly like that. Well done, Harry – things are looking up."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 The slaves had been given water to drink and thin, wafer-like biscuits to eat. They didn't taste particularly nice, but they were very filling – Sarah felt enormously revived after no more than nibbling at the corner of one while she scoured the room for possible exits.

 Most of the slaves had subsided back into their defeated huddles, watching her sullenly and silently, but Emera trailed after her as she examined every inch of floor and wall she could reach. "What is it that you seek?"

 "A way out of here, of course." Sarah leaned back to peer up at what looked to be a ventilation shaft, set high up in the wall. It was small, but she'd squeezed through tight spaces before – how to reach it, though, that was the thing.

 "But the way out is there." Emera pointed at the door. "It is sealed."

 "Exactly – that's why we need to find a different way out." Sarah cast about for something she could stand on to reach up to the vent and caught hold of one of the bunks, tried dragging it across.

 "But the sky raiders will catch us – they will be angry."

 "Oh, they'll be angry, all right – if they find out," Sarah breathlessly conceded as she wrestled the bunk into position and then flashed a grin at the other woman. "But that doesn't mean they'll catch us!"

 Emera caught at her arm, eyes wide and worried. "And if we find your different way out of this chamber, what then? We all cannot hide and we have no flying carts to return us to our home – we could not stop the sky raiders from coming after us if we did. Does escaping this place truly help us?"

 "Of course it does." The list of obstacles the other woman had reeled off was daunting, but if there was one thing Sarah had learned on her travels with the Doctor, it was that anything was possible as long as you kept going and refused to accept defeat, and she did, she refused. "Look, Emera. I don't have a plan," she admitted, feeling for the Doctor's hat, still tucked into her belt. Her fingers closed around the soft felt and squeezed it tight, just for a moment. "I don't know how to get your people home and I don't know how to stop the sky raiders from attacking you again. But I do know that getting out of this room is the first step. And there'll be another step after that one, and then another – and if we keep taking those steps…well, we'll find a way. I know we will. But we won't stand any chance at all if we don't at least try. So will you help me?"

 Emera looked as if she might just be convinced, even if no one else was – but before she had the chance to reply, there was a sound from outside in the vestibule. The sky raiders had returned.

 And Sarah had nowhere to hide.

 She was frozen to the spot, out of ideas, when, just as the door began to open, Emera suddenly snatched up a thin blanket from a nearby bunk and threw it around her head and shoulders like a shawl, then pushed her into the centre of the nearest group of slaves, huddled in a corner.

 Sarah crouched low and kept her head bent, expecting to be spotted at any moment. She didn't dare look at the guards who had entered, but listened intently to their brusque announcement. "Attention, work party four. You will follow and obey. You will not argue. You will not resist. As this is your first work shift, you will receive instruction to which you will attend carefully or suffer the consequences. At the end of the work shift you will return to this room for rest and refreshment. Now line up and follow."

 The slaves didn't seem to really understand what was happening, they were terrified, but they were also conditioned to obey sky raiders – too afraid not to obey, more like – and so obediently shuffled into something that might almost resemble a line, if you squinted, down the centre of the room. Sarah went with them – what else could she do – wondering how she had ever been afraid that they might give her away, for even as frightened and confused as they were, they made sure that she was always surrounded, always at the centre of the huddle, as hidden as it was possible to be, in the circumstances.

 Even so, she wasn't sure how the sky raiders could possibly fail to notice that she wasn't Lindosian – a shawl covering her head was no disguise. All they had to do was look at her…but they didn't, not once. They weren't expecting an alien in a room full of native slaves, and they weren't expecting the slaves to give them any trouble, so they paid no attention at all. This was just another boring day's work to them.

 It was a shattering realisation. All these slaves, their lives and families destroyed, robbed of their home and their freedom…and to the sky raider guards responsible for their misery, it was all just another boring day's work.

 As they were marched out of the room, Emera caught at Sarah's hand. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "It is too late now."

 Sarah squeezed her hand. "It's never too late. We'll find another way."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 "You keep watch, Harry – don't want any uninvited guests dropping in. This won't take long." By the time the sentence was complete, the Doctor had swept across the room to a bank of screens along one wall; he dropped onto a chair and activated a console all in one fluid purposeful movement, utterly engrossed within seconds.

 Harry hung back by the door with a very silent Roba sticking tight to his side still, fidgeting worriedly as the minutes ticked past. The silence was broken only by the hum of the machines that filled the room and the rattle-click of the Doctor's fingers as they flew over the console, while images danced across the screens – representing what, Harry had no idea, the symbols and diagrams seemed meaningless to him, but presumably the Doctor understood.

 He glanced back through the little window into the darkened corridor outside. Not a peep. Perhaps everyone was tied up with that tunnel collapse still and hadn't even noticed their absence yet.

 The Doctor was still absorbed in whatever he was doing. Harry wondered how long this might take and where Sarah might have got to, wandering around out there all by herself. She'd be all right, though, surely – she couldn't have been found yet, at any rate. They'd have heard the ruckus from here if she had. If the Doctor would only hurry up, they could see about finding her, and –

 "Aha!"

 That sounded promising. "Found what you were looking for?"

 "Better than that, Harry," the Doctor enthused, spinning around in his chair with an enormous grin plastered across his face. "I've found a floor-plan!"

 Well, yes. Given how alike all these corridors were, that certainly did sound like a good thing. "Oh, well, well done, and all that," Harry congratulated him. "But that's not what you were looking for?"

 "Oh no, certainly not," the Doctor airily dismissed, head bent over the console once more.

 Harry always felt as if he were about five miles behind the Doctor, and never could quite manage to catch up, no matter what. A good night's sleep would probably help, but it had been a long while since one of those had been anywhere in the offing. He waited a moment to see if the other man would elaborate, but nothing appeared to be forthcoming, so he tried asking, "Er…so what exactly are you looking for then, Doctor?"

 "Information," the Doctor distractedly replied, eyes glued to the screens still. "We'll head for the control room in a minute. I want to talk to Silrin again." He glanced over his shoulder with a mischievous grin. "We might even make it there without getting lost this time."

 "The control room?" Harry wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. "Won't they just lock us up again?"

 "Oh, well I'm sure they'll probably try," the Doctor conceded. "That's why we're stocking up on ammunition first."

 Harry was thoroughly confused now. "Ammunition?"

 "Information, Harry," the Doctor repeated. "Best weapon there is. Know thy enemy, as my old friend Sun Tzu used to say, or words to that effect – and he made rather an excellent point, don't you think? This operation is run by a very wealthy corporation a very long way away. Find their weak spot, and perhaps we can avoid –" He broke off mid-sentence. A light had come on out in the corridor. "Lights, Harry – quick!"

 As the Doctor hastily turned the screens off, Harry fumbled with the unfamiliar control and got the light switched off only seconds before someone knocked on the door.

 He looked to the Doctor, just about able to make him out in the dull glow of the cables that wound all around the darkened room. The other man gestured for him to move across, to the other side of the doorframe, so that he'd be behind the door as it opened, and motioned for Roba to come over to him. The boy seemed to be frozen to the spot with terror, though. Harry had to give him a gentle push to get him moving and then ducked beneath the window while Doctor grabbed Roba's hand and quickly pulled him back behind one of those high metal racks, out of sight, just as a voice called from outside. "Hello? I know you're in there."

 Everything was very still, just for a moment. Then the door swung open – Harry had got behind it just in time. Pressed tight against the wall, he listened intently to the soft footfalls of someone stepping into the room. Through the window set into the open door he caught no more than a glimpse of a silhouette as the intruder stepped from the light of the hallway into the darkened room, the beaky silhouette of a sky raider guard – no, a _Tarsin_ guard. As the door began to swing shut again, it half-turned to fumble for the light switch, and Harry moved, quickly, before it knew he was there. He dived forward, catching the creature from behind with a neat, effective rugger tackle of a kind he'd not attempted in many a year now, bringing back fond memories of Saturday afternoons spent charging up and down muddy playing fields, simpler days when he could never have imagined that the skill might someday come in handy in a situation like this.

 The floor of this moon base was a lot dryer but also a lot harder to land on than a muddy playing field. As they fell, the guard's head cracked against the upright strut of one of those tall metal racks, stunning it, and professional instinct promptly kicked in, so Harry gave it a cursory once-over to check that the injury wasn't serious before pulling at the limp creature's arms to get them pinned behind its back. "Find something to tie it up with, Doctor," he called.

 A moment later, the Doctor's scarf was dangled in front of his nose. "Will this do?"

 Well, it wasn't ideal, no, but Harry glanced around and saw nothing better, aside from the many trailing cables around the room, all of which appeared to be doing something rather important, so the scarf would have to do. He set about securing the guard as firmly as the loose weave of the scarf allowed, while Roba reappeared at his side to gaze at the captive creature in awe and the Doctor bent to pull a gun out of its belt holster.

 "You'd better hang on to this, Harry." He held the weapon out with a grimace of distaste and dropped it into Harry's hands.

 Harry turned the weapon over in his hand. It was an even odder design than that ray gun thingummy he'd used against the Wirrrn on Nerva Space Station and had a number of settings that meant absolutely nothing to him, so he tucked it into the back of his waistband fervently hoping he'd never have to use the thing, and then bent to examine their prisoner again. "I think it's waking up, Doctor."

 Roba promptly squeaked in panic and ducked behind Harry's back. Harry gave him what he hoped was a reassuring pat on the shoulder while the Doctor crouched to look the creature in the face as it peeled its eyes open.

 "Hallo there," he greeted it with an affable grin. "I'm dreadfully sorry for giving you such a rude welcome, but we really can't have you raising the alarm just yet. Is there a loose end you can tie his mouth with, Harry? We've almost finished here –"

 "No, wait. Wait!" the captive guard hastily shouted. "This is a mistake. I wasn't going to raise the alarm. I'm not your enemy. I'm a friend!"

 "A friend?" The Doctor regarded the creature curiously. "We haven't seen much sign of friendship since we arrived here. Why should we believe you?"

 "I am your contact, I wish to help, that's why I'm here," the Tarsin squeaked, turning frantic eyes upon Harry. "Please, don't you remember? I spoke to you earlier, tried to explain…"

 Harry hadn't realised it was the same creature who'd spoken to him so cryptically earlier – they all looked so alike – and was rather taken aback when the Doctor cast a reproachful look in his direction.

 "Spoke to you earlier? You might have mentioned that, Harry."

 "Mentioned what?" he protested. "He babbled something about wanting to know our plans and then handed us over to be interrogated. That isn't an act of friendship where I come from!"

 "No, you're right. You are right. I'm sorry," the guard agreed. "I panicked and was clumsy. The fault is mine. Please believe that I did not intend you any harm – I came back to offer assistance as soon as I was able, but you had already escaped. But I did not raise the alarm, as you can see. I came in search of you alone."

 The Doctor cocked his head to one side, studying the creature thoughtfully. "What's your name?"

 "I am Talib – guardsman, third division."

 "Well, it's very nice to meet you, I'm sure, Guardsman Talib, third division," the Doctor said, and then added, in a breezy, nonchalant tone, "So tell me…are you a native rights campaigner, or are you working with the Free Trade Alliance?"

 Harry hadn't the foggiest what he meant by that, but the misshapen alien face lit up like the Blackpool illuminations. "Then I was right! You are agents!"

 "Oh, but we're really not, you know. My friend and I are travellers, in fact – we arrived quite by chance, but now that we've seen what's going on here, we can't possibly leave until the matter has been resolved." The Doctor's airy tone became stern. "Your people simply cannot be allowed to continue enslaving the Lindosians and despoiling the wealth of their solar system. Isn't that right, Harry?"

 "Quite right, Doctor," Harry stoutly agreed. He wasn't sure how it was that the Doctor always managed to find a cause to fight for wherever he went, but they were here now and had made this their fight and that was that, no going back. Roba and his people deserved their freedom.

 The Doctor nodded approvingly, evidently pleased to have confirmation they were on the same page, and continued, "I'm sure you understand, Talib, since you're working toward the same goal, aren't you: the freedom of Lindos –"

 "The freedom of Tarse, also," Talib the guardsman interjected. "Freedom from this stranglehold Lu-Corps has over our industry, our government – our world."

 The Doctor looked very interested. "Free Trade Alliance then, I take it," he lightly remarked, narrowing his eyes.

 "We do sympathise with the cause of the natives, also."

 "Well, I'm very glad to hear it. I'm the Doctor, by the way. This is my colleague, Harry Sullivan – untie Guardsman Talib's hands please, Harry, we're all on the same side here – and that young man trying to hide behind Harry's back is Roba. He's rather afraid of you, I'm sure you can understand why, so please don't make any loud sounds or sudden movements that might startle him." The Doctor flashed a dazzling grin at the guard as he helped him to his feet. "So Silrin really has had a spy under his nose all this time – I'm rather delighted to hear it, you know, it makes his paranoia seem so much more reasonable. Now then, why don't you tell us all about the exciting undercover work you've been doing here?"

 The conversation that ensued was rather hard to follow – something to do with falsified reports and governmental corruption, corporate business strategy and monopolies, public opinion, cover-ups and the rumour mill, the Tarsin space programme, intergalactic trade alliances, embezzlement and communication lock-downs. Harry lost track of it early on and then stopped listening entirely when he turned to see how Roba was doing, in the same room as a dreaded sky raider and all that, and saw that the boy looked to be on the verge of another panic attack, the grey of his face drained away almost to white, wide eyes fixed unblinkingly on Talib the guardsman as he talked animatedly with the Doctor.

 "Oh now, chin up, eh, old chap. Come on, sit down over here, that's it." Harry could have kicked himself for not noticing the boy's distress sooner. He sat Roba down against the wall and then squatted alongside him, wishing Sarah were here. She'd know what to say. "The Doctor'll soon have everything sorted out, you'll see."

 "I don't understand," Roba whispered. "It's a sky raider. Why is the sky raider here?"

 "Well…" Harry scrubbed a hand through his hair. "He seems to be trying to help us. He's on our side."

 Roba shook his head fiercely. "Sky raiders are not on our side! They're not, you know, not ever."

 "This one is."

 It was Talib himself who had spoken. He'd approached so silently that Harry hadn't even realised he was there until he spoke, and Roba almost jumped out of his skin with terror at being directly addressed by a sky raider that was within touching distance. Harry slung a protective arm around the boy's shoulders as he hugged his knees to his chest and rocked with fear when Talib crouched to look him in the eye.

 "Your name is Roba, yes?" The Tarsin's tone was surprisingly gentle. "I am sorry, Roba. I am sorry that I frighten you. I am sorry that your people have been harmed. Please believe that not all of my people are the same and allow me to help you in any way that I can."

 "I want my mother," Roba whispered, tears in his eyes. "She was taken. Can you give her back?"

 Talib looked a bit worried, insofar as it was possible to interpret any expression formed by those alien features. "I don't know, but I will try," he declared, solemnly extending a hand toward the boy. "Do you believe me?"

 Roba turned wide, frightened eyes in Harry's direction again, looking for guidance of some kind, perhaps, but then hesitantly whispered, "I don't know. Maybe," and reached out a tentative hand, allowed a single fingertip to brush against the Tarsin's fingers.

 Well, it was a start. Standing behind Talib, the Doctor beamed. "Splendid. We're all friends here, and we have a lot to be getting on with, so let's get on with it, shall we?"

 dwdwdwdwdw

 Aside from that one time on Exxilon, Sarah had never even set foot in a mine before, still less worked in one, but the instructions were basic enough that any five-year-old could have followed them. 'This is where you will dig. Here is your equipment. This is what you are looking for. These are the trucks you will load. Waste is deposited there.' After that, the guards retreated to a quiet corner to relax over a cup of whatever the sky raider equivalent of tea might be and more or less left them to it, and she was reminded of her earlier observation that this was just a boring day's work to them. The slaves never gave them any trouble so they never expected any trouble…and that might just give her the chance she needed.

 She scratched half-heartedly at the rock with her pick while studying the surrounding area as closely as she felt she could get away with beneath the disinterested watch of those guards. They'd been marched to the very end of the tunnel to hack away at the rock face, but she'd seen other tunnels branching off, further back, as they'd been driven past like so many sheep. So, since the dead end here meant sneaking further along and away while the guards' backs were turned was impossible, she was just going to have to find a way past them and back along that tunnel, somehow, to try one of those other passages.

 And that was going to be the difficult part.

 "We really need some kind of diversion," she whispered to Emera, who was sticking close.

 "Diversion?"

 "You know, a distraction – something to hold the guards' attention, so we can slip back along that tunnel and get away."

 "This is your plan: to break away now, from this place of work?"

 "Well, there's no point hanging around here wearing ourselves out lugging rocks around all day, is there? No, the sooner we can get out there and away, the sooner we'll find the Doctor and find a way of freeing everyone else."

 "And you are certain this can be done? You have seen all that they have, all that we do not have – yet you are certain we may drive them away for all time?"

 Emera had a real knack for asking tricky questions. Sarah sighed. "I can't know for sure, of course I can't. But I want to at least _try_ – for my sake, as well as yours. I don't want to spend the rest of my life breaking my back hauling rocks around down here!"

 "No more do I." Emera was suddenly resolute. "And I wish that my children may never see this place, may never know what it is to be taken from their home, helpless, and made to serve others."

 She had children…Sarah remembered the children she'd seen back at the encampment, small and frightened and parentless, and knew that she had to do whatever it took to get this woman back home and reunite her with her family – to reunite as many of those broken families as possible. "Then you'll come?"

 Emera's eyes were wide and frightened, but she nodded. "If I may help, then I will, even if it means death."

 "Well, I sincerely hope it won't come to that," Sarah fervently told her. "But we won't get anywhere at all if we can't work out how to distract those guards."

 "I will do it," whispered a small voice at her side. Startled, she swung around to see that young lad who'd spoken up about the moons back in the barracks. "I hope you win," he said, wide-eyed and earnest. "I want to go home."

 Before she could reply, he had slunk away to the other side of the tunnel and caught hold of one of the heavy sacks of special rock they were loading up. He dragged it across to the truck they were meant to be filling – and then made a big show of attempting to lift the sack into the truck, failing, and dropping the whole lot as he fell back. One or two of the others seemed to get into the spirit of the act as well, and between them the whole truck was toppled, spilling its contents everywhere.

 The guards leapt to their feet with a shout and came running over to berate the slaves for carelessness, ordering them to right and re-load the truck, and in the general confusion the tunnel was left wide open.

 Now or never.

 Hanging back, Sarah waited until she was sure both guards were well and truly otherwise occupied. Then she caught at Emera's hand and they ran, as quickly and as quietly as they could, back along the tunnel and around the first bend they came to, out of sight of those guards if they should happen to turn around again.

 "It worked!" Emera gasped in wonder. "We are away from them – free!"

 "I just hope we can stay free," Sarah admitted. "And while we're at it, let's hope that boy's all right – some of those rocks fell on him, you know."

 "Olos. His name is Olos."

 "He was very brave – so were the others who helped distract the guards for us." She hadn't expected that; they'd seemed so broken and cowed, and she'd been so focused on Emera, she hadn't stopped to think that the others might be listening too, that her words might influence them as well. But maybe all they'd needed to restore their spirit was hope, however slight. She could only hope – there was that word again – that the hope she'd given them wasn't false.

 "We will go back for them?" Emera looked anxious in the dim light given off by the lamps mounted at odd intervals along the tunnel walls.

 Sarah nodded determinedly, because leaving them there like that was unthinkable. "We will, as soon as we can. But just now we'd better see if we can find our way out of here and back to the Doctor – wherever he is."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 "Look out, someone's coming!"

 Harry hissed the warning the moment he heard voices and footsteps in the corridor outside, and the Doctor's rapid-fire discussion with Talib came to an abrupt halt.

 Hidden at the back of the room, they waited silently as the voices of what sounded like two or three Tarsins grew progressively louder and clearer as they approached the door. Talib looked as if he were planning his excuses already while Roba pressed so close Harry could feel his little heart pounding. Only the Doctor appeared unconcerned, pulling a yo-yo out of his pocket and playing with it as the guards drew level with the door of their hideout…and carried on past, their voices and footsteps fading away into the distance. Then he put the yo-yo away again and turned to Harry.

 "I've got a little job for you, Harry," he cheerfully announced as if nothing had happened, and Harry wondered what was coming now. "I want you to go with Talib to retrieve a data storage device he's got safely tucked away, and then bring it back to me here."

 "Data storage device?"

 "Very small and very important; it contains all the evidence Talib has been piecing together. It mustn't be allowed to fall into the wrong hands."

 So that was another way of saying 'don't mess up, Sullivan', then. Harry nodded. "Right you are, Doctor. What are you going to do?"

 "Well," said the Doctor in a conversational tone. "I rather thought I might stay here and see if I can rig up some kind of transceiver array that'll allow us to piggy-back the differential pulse of the Tarsins' subspace hyper-channel relay and adjust the amplitude modulation to override their communications lock-down – allow us to get a message out."

 Harry blinked. It _sounded_ like English… "Sorry, Doctor, I didn't quite follow that."

 "I'm going to build a communications device, Harry."

 "Oh, I see." Why he couldn't have just said that in the first place was beyond Harry. "And you'll be able to do that here, will you?"

 The Doctor grinned. "Well, I daresay I'll have to scrounge around for some of the components, but I don't see why not. Let's find out."

 "I thought you wanted to go to the control room, to talk to what's-his-name – Silrin?"

 "All in good time, Harry, all in good time – let's get our all ducks lined up first, shall we?"

 "This room is accessed very infrequently," Talib offered. "So long as you avoid tampering with any systems whose failure would be noticed, you shouldn't be disturbed."

 "I'm delighted to hear it," said the Doctor, "Since I'm not really in the mood for another round of hide-and-seek with your colleagues. Now, you need to move fast, before our little disappearing act comes to light, so –"

 "What about me?" Roba piped up, and the Doctor eyed him speculatively.

 "How would you feel about staying here and giving me a hand, young man?"

 Roba looked dubious in the extreme and caught hold of Harry's arm, tucking in close and gazing up with pleading eyes, and the Doctor laughed.

 "Yes, I thought as much. You've got a friend for life there, Harry."

 "So it seems." Harry wasn't sure taking Roba along on this trip was entirely wise, he'd be a lot safer here with the Doctor, but they'd come this far together and the boy clearly wasn't going to move from his side until they found and reunited him with his mother. He just hoped he'd be able to keep the promise he'd made…and keep Roba safe, while he was at it.

 "Well that settles it," the Doctor brightly announced. "Hop along, then, the three of you – no time to lose."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 "I wonder how they manage the atmosphere down here," Sarah mused aloud as she picked her way along the murky tunnel, because thinking about minutiae helped kept her mind off her worries about the bigger picture. "I mean, it's musty, but breathable – but you wouldn't think there'd be any atmosphere at all, underground on a moon. I suppose they must pipe it in from the base."

 That bit of speculation opened up a whole new raft of questions about how the artificial atmosphere was sealed in, given the permeability of rock – the Doctor would know – but she'd already lost Emera. "You talk of such strange things, Sarah. I am afraid I do not understand even half of what you say."

 And this must be how the Doctor felt, whenever he started rattling on about technicalities that she and Harry didn't understand. Sarah offered the other woman a rueful smile. "It isn't important. I was just thinking out loud."

 They'd reached a fork in the tunnel and she eyed it speculatively, trying to orient herself – the passage they'd been exploring ran roughly parallel to the one the sky raiders had driven them down earlier, so to get back to the main complex of the moon base they'd need to go…that way.

 Emera followed her. "I don't even know where you come from."

 "Well, that's a bit of a long story, really," Sarah told her. "Oh, I couldn't even begin to describe how far away my home is – so very far, across the stars. It isn't at all like your world."

 A pang of homesickness at the thought of it took her by surprise. She didn't usually miss Earth all that much when she was away from it – always too much to see and too much to do, no time to stop and reflect. She missed it now, though, thinking about how far away it was and how long they'd been travelling…a bit too long, perhaps, this time. So much had happened since the last time she'd slept in her own bed, so much that was mad and exhilarating and terrifying and wonderful and horrifying, usually all at the same time, and there'd been no time to really process any of it.

 "Then how do you come to be here?"

 A wry chuckle escaped. "That's an even longer story, I'm afraid. It was an accident, really. We were supposed to be going to Scotland…but then again," the thought suddenly struck her, "I'm not so sure it really was such an accident. The Doctor does hate to be tied down. Oh, hello: which way now?"

 They'd hit another fork in the road, and again Sarah eyed the tunnels thoughtfully. The right-hand fork seemed most likely to lead them back to the moon base, if she was remembering the direction right, while to the left…she wrinkled her nose.

 "Can you smell that?"

 Emera looked worried. "The smell is rotten – like death."

 Rotten, like death. Something was churning in the pit of Sarah's stomach, a sense of foreboding that grew stronger as she slowly stepped into the left-hand passage, which took a sharp turn and then widened out to become a deep cavern, whose floor dropped away just a few feet beyond the entrance. The smell was stronger here, nauseating, and somehow she knew what she was going to see even before she'd taken the few paces forward that brought her to the edge of the ledge to glance over into the pit that lay beyond, calling out too late for Emera to stay back.

 The wail the Lindosian woman let out was like the cry of a wounded animal, desolate and raw. As she collapsed to her knees, gasping out shuddering sobs and scrabbling at the edge of the ledge, Sarah felt her own knees go weak and dropped to the ground alongside her, unable to wrench her eyes away from the heaped corpses that filled the pit before them.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 

 


	5. Standoff

Emera had gone quiet, after the initial violence of her grief and horror.

 Sitting with an arm draped around the Lindosian's shoulders while she shook with silent sobs, Sarah still couldn't take her eyes off the bodies heaped high in the pit before them. She felt as if the sight of them was burning itself onto her retinas, inescapable and unforgettable. The part of her mind that was still somehow capable of rational thought observed that the corpses were in varying stages of decomposition, which suggested that this charnel pit had been in use for quite some time, and she wondered just how many years the sky raiders had been snatching these people from their homes and bringing them up here to their deaths. She couldn't even begin to count how many were down there. A couple at the top looked quite fresh and a dispassionate voice at the back of her mind told her they'd probably been killed in that tunnel collapse – they looked to have what Harry would probably call crush injuries.

 Harry would be a useful person to have around right now. He was unpredictable in tense or emotional circumstances, could be almost ridiculously awkward at times, but he did have a very soothing bedside manner when he chose to turn it on, and although Sarah herself generally had very little patience with being soothed, Emera could certainly do with some just now, and she didn't feel in any fit state to give it.

 "My people…" The words were no more than a whisper on the edge of audibility.

 "I know," Sarah whispered back.

 "There was a man." Emera's eyes were turned away from the corpses, fixed unblinkingly on the ground beneath her, her voice low. "We were pair-bonded, long ago. Toral was his name. He was taken, so many seasons past, before our youngest child had been birthed. And now I see where he found his eternal rest."

 "You don't know that." Even as she said it, Sarah knew the attempt at reassurance was futile, but it came automatically, almost unbidden. "He might be with one of the other work parties still…"

 Emera shook her head. "No. I know. It is many turns of the seasons now, too many. He is in there, somewhere, so very far from the soil and sun."

 She was crying again and there was nothing Sarah could do, nothing she could say – there was nothing that could ever make this better, nothing that could bring back all these people who'd been snatched from their homes and families and brought up here to this desolate moon to live, work and die in slavery underground. The sky raiders hadn't even given them the dignity of a proper burial, had dumped them in here like animals – worse, like refuse.

 "But no more." Her own cheeks were wet, and she dashed at them angrily with the back of a grimy hand. "No more. We're going to put a stop to this, Emera. We're going to get your people home so that no one else gets thrown in here like this, no one."

 "Why?" Eyes brimming with tears turned toward her, innocent in their incomprehension. "Why do you help us? This is not your world. We are not your people. When the sky raiders came to us they brought destruction. Why would you, who are also strangers, risk all to help us?"

 "Why?" Sarah echoed the question, surprised by it. She rarely questioned her own motives for pitching in, only knew that she had never been able to walk past someone in need. Now more than ever she tended to follow the Doctor's example without question or hesitation, plunging headlong into whatever situation they found themselves in, trying to do whatever was right, or at least what seemed right, because there were always lives at stake, and how could anyone just stand back and do nothing when there were lives at stake? "Because I couldn't live with myself," she said, "If I just walked away and left you here like this."

 Emera was silent for a moment. "Then we should go on," she said at length.

 "Are you sure you're ready."

 "I think we must."

 Sarah nodded. "All right, then. On we go."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 "My people are not bad people, you know."

 Talib sounded almost fierce, as if it were very important to him that Harry and Roba should believe this.

 "Even the ones who work here," he continued as he leant around a corner and then gestured for them to follow. "They're not bad, not really – not most of them. They're weak. They have families to support, bills to pay. Lu-Corps controls the economy and the salary is needed. So they close their eyes to the work they do. They tell themselves it doesn't matter, the natives are only primitives, the money is what matters – feeding those mouths back home. They close their eyes and keep their mouths shut. They follow orders."

 Harry was a naval officer; he knew all about following orders. In the military one had to be prepared to do anything, including kill, on the order of a superior officer, without question, for the greater good. It was a matter of trust.

 He was also a doctor. He'd sworn an oath to do no harm and had been fortunate thus far in his career that the two sides of his profession, the medical and the military, had never yet come into conflict.

 He wondered what he would do if he were ordered to act against his conscience, to cause harm to innocents. Would he continue to trust that a greater good was somehow still being served by those orders? Or would he have the courage to say no and face the consequence?

 "Well, they'll lose their jobs now," he said, hurrying after Talib to the next point of cover, "If we pull this off."

 "I know that." Talib looked grim. "There will be hardship, for a time. But it must be done. With Lu-Corps gone, the economy will recover, free government will recover – and the primitives will also recover, left to themselves. It will be for the best, for all."

 "I'm not primitive."

 Harry glanced down in surprise to see Roba glaring fiercely at Talib.

 "I know what that means," he said with all the wounded dignity a small boy could muster. "Everyone keeps saying it. It means we don't know anything. But I know things. I don't have a flying cart, but I know things. I know things that you don't."

 Talib met Harry's eye and shrugged. It was a very human-like gesture for such an alien-looking creature. "I'm sure you do," he agreed. "I'm sorry if I offended you. But now we must be quiet – we are near the refinery; there will be workers there who may hear us."

 "Mum's the word, then," Harry agreed, and two pairs of alien eyes turned upon him, uncomprehending. He tried again, lowering his voice to a whisper. "Er – quietly does it, I mean."

 Talib nodded. "Come – this way."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 There was a checkpoint at the mine exit, manned by a very bored-looking sky raider, who appeared to be playing some kind of logic game on his computer terminal while he waited for the next load to be brought out.

 Sarah watched him for a while to get a feel for the lie of the land, and then prepared to sneak back to where she'd left Emera, further back in the tunnel, but stopped short when she spotted another one approaching. Tucking herself back into her hiding place, she listened intently to their conversation, anxious for news about the Doctor or Harry, or any other information that might prove useful.

 It wasn't that kind of conversation, however. The two sky raiders chatted at length about their new shift patterns, which it seemed no one was happy with, about when they might next expect to get furlough and how much their children back home might have grown by the time they got to see them, about how they were never getting paid enough to work on a rock like this for months on end…it was, in short, a disconcertingly _normal_ conversation. It was the kind of conversation you might expect to hear around the coffee pot in any office back on Earth in the course of the average working day, and such casual, everyday chitchat felt jarringly out of place coming from the mouths of the slavers responsible for that charnel pit. It felt wrong just to be listening to it, listening to these monsters chattering away as if they were people, as if they weren't responsible for the devastation of so many innocent lives.

 At last the visitor headed off, leaving the bored one to his game. Sarah slunk away into the shadows of the tunnel, back to the spot where she'd left Emera, and updated her on what she'd seen: the checkpoint and its guard that barred their exit from the mine.

 "Then a di-ver-sion is needed." Emera stumbled slightly over the unfamiliar word. "As before, to allow us to pass."

 Sarah agreed and wracked her brains as they crept back toward the exit, trying to think of a way they might be able to distract the guard long enough to sneak past. Emera's expression hardened at the sight of him, and Sarah knew she was seeing that charnel pit again, maybe thinking of the husband she'd lost and the children she'd been taken from.

 "I will distract him." The Lindosian's tone was grim, resolute. "You must go on."

 "Emera, wait," Sarah hissed, but it was too late, the other woman had already hurried forward to challenge the guard, whose shock at the sight of her might have been amusing in different circumstances.

 It didn't seem to occur to him to draw his weapon and start shooting. That much was a relief. He clearly just assumed that Emera was trying to escape – which was true enough, after all – and so tried to herd her back into the mine, where she was supposed to be. Emera evaded him and tried to run past and, as he leapt forward to catch her, Sarah snuck up behind him, snatched up a hefty metal flask from the desk he'd just vacated, and cracked him over the head with it, as hard as she possibly could.

 He crumpled to the ground at her feet and she was rather shocked at how good it felt, couldn't get those bodies in that pit out of her mind.

 She bent and took the gun from his belt holster, tucked it into her own belt, alongside the Doctor's hat. "Come on, this way."

 They'd made it all of five strides past the checkpoint into the moon base proper when an alarm started to ring, bringing them skidding to a panicked halt.

 "They know that we have escaped! We will be caught!" Emera was panic-stricken, her newly-found daring and resolve crumbling fast in the face of this setback, and Sarah caught at her hand.

 "No, no – the alarm isn't for us." It couldn't be – they were still within sight of the guard she'd hit and he was still out cold. No one had found him and he hadn't set off an alert, which meant it was for something else. The Doctor, perhaps? Harry? A stab of fear mingled with frustration tore through her. They might be doing anything and anything might be happening to them and here she was, unable to help.

 Because whatever the alarm was for, there was movement up ahead now, blocking their escape.

 The very thought of retreat at this point tasted bitter, but there was no other choice. "Quick, back into the mine!"

 As they ran to get back out of sight before they could be spotted, Sarah could only imagine what might be going on elsewhere.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 "Your escape has been discovered." Talib's prominent brow ridges were furrowed in an expression of deep concern as he listened intently to a transmission on his radio headset and then switched it off again.

 Harry's first panicked thought at the sound of the alarm had been that the Doctor may have been captured – or Sarah, perhaps, he'd been worried what might have become of her since they were separated – but this was almost as bad, if not unexpected. "I suppose it had to happen sooner or later."

 "But there will be a search, we must hurry."

 They'd been hurrying already, as silently as these metal floors would allow, moving swiftly through a maintenance shaft that ran behind what Talib said was a refinery, where lumps of raw lupium ore from the mines were processed for export back to the Tarsin homeworld.

 Harry was still hazy on just what lupium was exactly and what it might be used for – a mineral and an energy source, according to the Doctor – but such details hardly seemed important. The Tarsins valued the stuff highly but it was emphatically not worth the suffering it caused, that was as much as he needed to know.

 "Here. Just here." Talib stopped in the middle of a nondescript section of the passage and reached above his head to fumble with a panel that was identical to those around it, no distinguishing features whatsoever. Pulling it open at the corner, he reached inside and took out a tiny oblong of plastic and metal, no more than an inch long, then carefully secured the panel once more so that it appeared undisturbed. "Here, this is the device."

 "That?" A data storage device, the Doctor had said, containing Talib's research, which was somehow the key to resolving this whole affair. Harry hadn't expected it to be so…small.

 "This." Talib's hand was trembling, his voice hoarse. "Months, I've been here months: hiding and sneaking, hacking systems, gathering evidence – with no way to send that information to those who could use it. So very close, and yet so far – and now if the Doctor can do as he says…"

 "Oh, he'll do it all right," Harry stoutly assured him. Stepping into the TARDIS had been a bit like Alice tumbling through the looking glass into Wonderland, nothing that he'd once thought he knew seemed safe or certain any more…except for the Doctor, and his uncanny ability to find a solution to any problem, no matter how seemingly insurmountable. And they'd seen a lot that was far more seemingly insurmountable than this. "You'll see. The Doctor's a first rate boffin."

 "I hope you're right. Everything rests on it, everything."

 Harry lifted an eyebrow. "We'd better get cracking then, hadn't we?"

 The steady toll of the alarm lent a heightened sense of urgency to their steps as they hurried back along the maintenance shaft. Talib went ahead, and, as they reached the opening back into the main corridor, he paused to cautiously peer out – then flung out an arm, jerking back.

 "Wait!" The warning was hissed under his breath as he urgently pushed Harry further back into the shaft.

 "What is it?" Harry carefully shepherded Roba ahead of him, the boy clutching at his arm.

 "Guards, at the refinery door – we can't get past without being seen."

 "Well, we can't stay here. The Doctor's waiting for that device of yours."

 "We must not be caught with it!" Talib's sallow features paled at the very idea of it.

 "Well then, if we distract them, perhaps – make a break for it. How many were there? We might make it…" Harry's voice trailed off even as he suggested it. Although he would willingly take the chance for himself, he knew he couldn't – wouldn't – risk Roba's life.

 "With both the data and the child, the risk is too great." Talib's pessimism was disheartening. "This is the second escape from custody now – lethal counter-measures will have been authorised."

 "If we run for it, they'll shoot to kill rather than capture, you mean." Harry had been shot at with lethal intent before and never much cared for the experience. "Is there another way through, then," he persevered, "if we followed this passage to the other end?"

 "No, the passage is blind-ended. There are ventilation shafts – here, you see? But they are small. You or I could never hope of fitting through." Talib's eyes lit up suddenly. "But the boy, perhaps…" He swung around to stare intently at Roba.

 "Oh no," Harry protested at once, feeling the reflexive clutch of the boy's fingers tightening on his arm, a silent plea for help. "No, he's a child, you can't possibly expect –"

 "But there is no other way!" Talib insisted. "The information must get through, and it must not be found. This shaft will be searched. We cannot escape, but the boy can. If he succeeds, if he gets this device to the Doctor – gets the data transmitted to those who can use it – it will be worth everything, any price."

  _We cannot escape_. Harry didn't like the sound of that one little bit. He looked down at Roba's wide-eyed, frightened little face. "Do you think you could do it, Roba – do you remember the way?"

 "It will be safer," Talib added, "Much safer than remaining here with us."

 "I remember the way." Roba's voice was little more than the ghost of a whisper. "I remember the turns we took. Must I do it? Alone?"

 "I'm sorry, old chap." Harry took hold of the boy's shoulders, bent to look him in the eye. "I don't think there's any other way. You just have to get to the Doctor. He'll take care of you."

 "But what will happen to you?"

 A very good question. "Don't you worry about that," Harry told him. "Take the device – you understand how important it is?"

 Roba nodded. "The Doctor will use it to set my mother free."

 "Well, that's the plan, old chap." The essence of it, at any rate – always supposing the Doctor wasn't found first, if that computer room was searched. "So you'll do it?"

 Roba stared at his feet, shuffling uncomfortably. "Why do you call everyone old?" he suddenly asked.

 The incongruity of the question was startling. A chuckle escaped. "You've been talking to Sarah, my boy. It's a very old habit of mine, I'm afraid – she's been trying to break me of it since we met."

 A wan smile crept across the boy's face. "She hasn't done a very good job."

 "No," Harry agreed. "She hasn't."

 "I will go." Roba was staring at his feet again, his voice small. "If I really must, I will do it."

 "That's the spirit." Harry tried to infuse his voice with all the confidence he wasn't feeling, for Roba's sake.

 Talib was already pulling the ventilation shaft open, there was no time to waste, but Harry couldn't help remembering what an ordeal it had been for Sarah to crawl through a similar shaft, back on Nerva Space Station – and she'd at least had a radio to remain in constant communication, and directions to guide her route.

 "Now, it'll be dark in there," he warned, wishing he could think of another way. "So keep picturing in your mind the turns you need to take, and move as quietly as you can so that no one hears. Remember: it isn't so very far, and the Doctor will sort everything out, once you reach him, so try not to worry too much, eh."

 And then there was nothing left to do but lift the boy up to the ventilation shaft and let him scramble inside, sealing it up after him with a final call of "Good luck, and be careful."

 "A very brave boy," Talib declared once Roba was on his way, and Harry agreed – but, rather more to the point, now that both Roba and the data storage device were safely out of harm's way, he was rather concerned about their own prospects for escaping this cramped shaft before they could be pinned down by any search parties.

 "Now then, what _are_ our chances of getting past those guards in one piece? The Doctor said there was a stun setting on this gun of yours." Keeping his voice low, he pulled the gun out to take another look at it, tried to calculate the angle around to the refinery door – could they be fast enough to get off a clean shot, more if needed? "Sniping from cover like this, we'd have surprise on our side, at any rate."

 Talib shook his head. "We wouldn't get far."

 What might the Doctor do in this situation? He'd attempt guile rather than force, surely.

 "Well, they aren't looking for you," Harry reasoned, mind racing to come up with a solution. After all, Talib was only in danger because he was helping the enemy. Remove the appearance of that collaboration, and surely the danger to Talib would also be removed. "You could walk out of here now, no harm done, so long as you aren't seen with me."

 Talib looked as if he were torn between honour and self-preservation. "You would still be trapped here," he pointed out. "And my presence may be questioned, but perhaps – shh, listen! They're coming!"

 Sure enough, there were voices at the entrance to the maintenance shaft, getting louder – cutting off any hope they might have had of making a break for it. They were trapped, like ducks in a barrel…but perhaps there was still a chance they needn't both be caught or killed.

 "Here, take the gun!" Harry thrust it at the other man. "Tell them you've captured me."

 It was the only chance either of them had, and there was no time for a debate, even if Talib had been so inclined. He caught on at once – and played the part extremely well; he'd had plenty of practice, of course, working here. Brandishing the gun, he roughly grabbed the back of Harry's collar and shouted, "Here! I've got one of them."

 Just in time. The other guards came charging into view, guns in hand, skidded to a halt at the sight of them, and demanded to know what Talib was doing here and where the other alien was.

 "We were separated," Harry quickly said, hoping to distract them from Talib's unauthorised presence when he was presumably supposed to have reported for search duty elsewhere. "I don't know where he went."

 "You must know," Talib snapped, giving him a shake. As impressions of belligerent guards went, it was a good one.

 "I don't, I assure you! We were trying to find a way back to our ship." It was all Harry could think of that might throw them off the scent.

 "You searched the entire shaft?" As he barked the question at Talib, the leading guard grabbed at Harry and he hissed through his teeth as the meaty fist closed around the half-healed animal bite on his upper arm.

 "I have – there is no trace of the other alien." Talib avoided meeting Harry's eyes.

 The guard yanked Harry toward him, away from Talib. "This is not your zone," he snarled. "You get no credit for this capture – return to your assigned duty and stay away from mine."

 Talib met Harry's eyes for the first time since going along with the ruse, very briefly, as he pressed past and scuttled away without saying another word. And then Harry was alone with the other guards.

 "It will be better for you to tell the truth now." The lead guard raised his gun, aimed it right between Harry's eyes. "So this is your final chance – tell us where your friend is."

 They could shoot if they wanted – at least the others would have a chance. Harry sucked in a deep breath, maintained his story. "I don't know. I really don't."

 Glowering, the guard gave in, jerking his head at his colleague. "Come on – take him away."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 Sarah and Emera had made it barely fifty yards back into the mine when they heard a sound up ahead – someone heading their way. Cut off front and back, they took the only path open to them, dashing into a narrow side passage.

 Just in time. They pressed themselves flat against the rock wall as a loaded truck rumbled past, hauled along by a pair of slaves and shepherded by a guard, who snarled at the slaves to pick up the pace as he came within earshot of the alarm that was still sounding, out in the main moon base.

 As soon as he reached the mine exit, he was going to find the guard Sarah had knocked out and then there would be another alarm raised – if the others they'd heard approaching hadn't done it already.

 Sarah caught at Emera's hand and hurried on, deeper into the mine before any kind of pursuit could be launched. They needed to find a safe place to regroup, needed to think – what were they going to do now?

 "We are cut off," Emera whispered, sounding very afraid.

 "I know."

 "What will we do?"

 "I don't know!"

 Emera was relying on Sarah, would never have left the relative safety of the work party if not for her, yet she couldn't think of anything – there was simply nothing left they could turn to their advantage.

 There had to be something.

 Sarah pulled Emera into a little alcove that seemed as good a place as any to stop and take stock. "We'll rest here for a minute. I need to think." She scrubbed her hands across her face and through her hair, tried to marshal her scattered thoughts. "Well, we're still free. That's one thing. And they don't know where we are. That's another."

 "Also, you have the barking stick," Emera offered, pointing at Sarah's belt.

 "Barking stick? Oh, you mean the gun." She'd forgotten about that, wondered if it could possibly be of any use to them. "I suppose there is only one guard with the rest of your group at the moment…"

 But she could already foresee all kinds of problems with that idea even if they did manage to force the guard to surrender; the work party was too large to move around stealthily, and a single hostage wouldn't be much protection from reprisals, if any at all. The trouble was that she couldn't think of anything else to try.

 "Come on, I suppose we should try to find our way back to the others, at least, make sure they're all right."

 They pressed on, trying to retrace their steps as best they could remember.

 They heard the others long before they came within sight of them; the shouting and jeering was startlingly unexpected, echoing through the tunnels and urging them to a faster pace to find out what was going on.

 There was only one guard on duty because the other had escorted that truck back up to the moon base. And the slaves had seen the advantage as clearly as Sarah had.

 They were fighting back. It was the one thing she absolutely hadn't anticipated, and she belatedly realised that her mouth had dropped open with shock at the sight of the Lindosian slaves, previously so cowed, disarming and overpowering the guard and smashing up their tools and baskets.

 Somehow they'd discovered – or re-discovered – some kind of spirit of rebellion, the will to fight for their freedom. But how far would it get them? There was an alert of some kind up in the moon base, another alarm about to be raised down here, no place to run…

 "No, stop!"

 Sarah ran forward and caught at the arm of a Lindosian man as he was about to bring a rock down on the guard's skull, because slave-driver or not, cold-blooded murder could never be the right thing to do. And then, above the shouts of the giddy-with-nervous-daring Lindosian escapees, she heard another sound: more shouting, this time from back along the main tunnel.

 "This way, quickly, we have to go – come on, run!"

 Frantic, she urged the rebelling slaves to make a run for it, into the side tunnels while they still could, because it was the only chance they had, but between the noise and confusion she couldn't make herself heard. She caught at the arms of those nearest to her, pushed and shoved them in the direction they needed to go, and saw Emera doing likewise, pulling at the young lad, Olos, who'd helped them earlier.

 They seemed to be getting the idea. But they were out of time.

 Sarah ran for it, surrounded by frightened and furious former slaves, and could only hope that no one had been left behind.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 It was stiflingly dark in this cramped little tunnel, barely high enough to crawl along.

 Roba had grown up on the open plains of Lindos, most days entering the family tent only to sleep. He'd never known that a place could be this small and cold and hard, the walls pressing in around him until he felt as if he couldn't breathe, and the way ahead too dark to see.

 He kept his eyes squeezed shut. It was somehow easier like that – easier to pretend that he wasn't in this tiny tunnel at all, but was back home crawling along the bank of the stream by dark of night, which was the very best time to catch the biggest and best-tasting fish. He'd learned to find his way around in the dark long ago. Remembering where to turn wasn't hard.

 Being all alone in this tiny, cramped little space was.

 There were voices now, somewhere down below, and he stopped moving, pressed his lips tightly together to keep from whimpering, and held his breath until the voices went quiet, which meant that the sky raiders had moved away.

 To think that he'd once thought seeing his mother and neighbours carried away by the sky raiders was as terrifying as anything could possibly be. Since setting out on this journey he'd learned just how many different ways it was possible to be terrified.

 But he'd never been alone up till now.

 'It's not so very far, and the Doctor will sort everything out when you reach him,' Harry had said. Roba repeated those words over and over inside his head to calm himself down, closed his hand tight around the tiny but precious cargo he'd been given and wished it was Harry's arm, because he'd felt safe, holding onto Harry's arm.

 He had nothing to hold onto now except this strange little object. It was so tiny and yet was going to help free his mother. Harry and the Doctor had promised – and so had the other one, the sky raider.

 His skin crawled just at the thought of the sky raider, however much it claimed to be a friend. He only hoped it was telling the truth. Harry was on his own with it now, with more sky raiders on the way, and remembering that was almost as heart-stopping as remembering what it had been like to see his mother dragged away by those monsters.

 "The Doctor will sort everything out," he whispered to himself. But to do that, the Doctor was relying on Roba to bring him this strange little thing, which meant that completing this task was the most important thing he'd ever had to do – the most important thing in the whole world.

 He tried hard not to be terrified at the thought of that, too.

 "The Doctor will sort everything out. The Doctor will sort everything out."

 He just hoped it was true.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 As the Doctor connected the final wire to complete his impromptu communications transceiver – which was a masterpiece of a lash-up, if he did say so himself – part of his mind was regretting that there was no one at hand to admire his handiwork, while another part was calculating the odds of Harry being able to get the data storage device safely back to him with the alarm sounding and a search of the moon base underway. Still another part was assessing his own chances of remaining undiscovered here in this server room very much longer, well hidden though he was behind the racks, while another again was worrying about Sarah, who remained unaccounted for and had been for rather a long time now, and another still was running over his preparations in search of any detail he may have overlooked. There were a great many variables in the mix, impossible to predict.

 Harry was a long time retrieving that data device. A person given to pessimism might start to feel concerned that something may have gone wrong, but although the Doctor had already formulated several possible back-up plans for such an eventuality, he wasn't quite ready to give up on Plan A just yet.

 There was nothing to do but wait, something the Doctor never enjoyed.

 A scratching sound caught his attention, coming from up high, inside the wall. Closer inspection revealed a ventilation shaft at just that spot, and as soon as he came close a small voice whispered from inside, "Doctor? Doctor, I found you."

 It was the Lindosian boy, Roba. Something had gone wrong, then.

 "Good heavens." The Doctor quickly unsealed the pane and the boy promptly thrust out a hand, which trembled.

 "I brought this. It's important," he gabbled. "I brought it for you." It was the data storage device.

 "That's marvellous, Roba." The Doctor took the device and gently lifted the boy to the ground. He was shaking, the dim luminescence of the cables winding around the darkened room accentuating his wan appearance. The journey through the ventilation shaft had clearly been something of an ordeal. "You've done tremendously well," the Doctor told him, resting one hand on the boy's shoulder and ruffling his fluffy white hair with the other. "I can't tell you how pleased I am. But, er, where's Harry?"

 Roba's agitation increased visibly, which did not bode well. The Doctor was already one human friend short.

 "There were sky raiders." The boy's voice was a whisper. "We were trapped. They told me to crawl through the tunnel – to bring you that thing." He waved at the device in the Doctor's hand. "It's important. I don't know what happened after that. But I remembered the turns – I found the right place."

 "Oh, you were marvellous. You did just the right thing." Even as he reassured the boy, the Doctor was swiftly assessing the implications of this turn of events. He almost regretted his decision not to ask Talib to go alone, but it had seemed prudent at the time – indeed, was the reason he had the device in his hand now – and he was confident that Harry would be far more useful to the Tarsins alive than dead, which meant capture was the most likely possibility, while Talib himself remained something of a wild card. So should he proceed as planned or not? It all hinged on Silrin, really, and whether he might bend or break when pressed. The Doctor rather thought he had the measure of the man, but there were no guarantees.

 No, there was nothing else for it. He was going to have to gamble.

 "Yes, well, we'd better get on with it, then," he proposed, and Roba wrinkled his nose, his expression morose.

 "You keep saying that but you haven't done anything."

 "Haven't done anything? Haven't done anything? I'll have you know, young man, that I've worked non-stop while you were off on your travels. Haven't done anything, my foot – what do you call this, then?" The Doctor gestured extravagantly at his improvised transceiver and Roba looked blank.

 "I don't know. What is it?"

 The Lindosians were extremely primitive at this point in their timeline – they had no vocabulary for such technology.

 "This, Roba, is a magic box," the Doctor declared in what he liked to think was his most impressive voice. "We can use it to send a message across the stars. But I think we should take a look at Talib's information first, to be sure we're sending the message we want to send and not another message entirely, which would be rather unfortunate, don't you think?"

 He quickly slotted the tiny device into the data port he'd built into the transceiver, linked to one of the consoles against the back wall, and then opened and scanned the files, fast as lightning. It was perfect – everything Talib had said it would be. He flicked a few switches on the transceiver, checked the settings one last time, then looked across at the small Lindosian with a beaming smile.

 "Would you like to do the honours, Roba? Come and press this button for me – this one here, that's it."

 Roba obediently pressed the button to send the transmission. He looked disappointed.

 "Nothing happened."

 "The very best magic, Roba," the Doctor said, "Is invisible to the naked eye. Something happened, all right – and someone will have noticed our unauthorised appropriation of the communications array by now, so we'd better announce ourselves, on the double."

 He strode back to the console and swiftly tapped a few keys to gain access to the internal communications system, opening a link to central command, and then declared, in his most stentorian tone, "I demand to speak to someone in authority."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 Harry had expected to be returned to the brig after being re-captured, but instead, his hands cuffed behind him, he was quick-marched in the opposite direction entirely, to a large, open-plan space filled with screens, computer terminals, and busy, bustling Tarsins buzzing around like so many flies.

 This was the central command centre the Doctor had talked about – and it was in uproar.

 It was several minutes before Harry's guards managed to attract any attention to the fact that they came escorting a prisoner, but a moment later again the officer chap, Proctor Silrin, appeared out of nowhere, bellowing.

 "Where is the other one? What have you done?"

 "Done? I don't know what you mean," Harry protested. It was the truth, as well. He knew the Doctor was planning something, but hadn't entirely followed that plan in any detail – and he wasn't sure there'd been time for even the Doctor to whip up quite this much chaos.

 "Your associate will be found and this insurrection in the mine will be put down!" Silrin almost spat the words.

 Harry had barely had time to process the meaning of this sentence – an insurrection in the mine? That could only mean Sarah, surely – before a new alarm started to squawk and a whole gaggle of Tarsin technicians came running to swarm all over Silrin, babbling furiously about some new crisis. They were talking about an unauthorised transmission this time, and that, Harry knew, had to be the Doctor.

 Did that mean Roba had reached him safely, then? Harry hadn't been able to shake the nagging concern that something may have happened to the boy, and wished again that there had been any other way – but whether he'd managed to find the Doctor or not, Roba had to be better off out there, even if he was on his own, than here, a prisoner, with Harry.

 Right on cue, a large view-screen that dominated the far wall suddenly flickered into life and the Doctor's face filled the entire screen, all forehead and eyes, demanding to speak to someone in authority.

 Harry instinctively started forward – to do what, he had no clear idea: would it help or hinder the Doctor to know he was here, a hostage? He had no chance to find out, as the powerful arm of the nearest guard wrapped around him and hauled him back, a hand clamping down over his mouth and a gun pressed against his temple, all the warning he needed not to struggle. He could only watch, in silence, as Silrin strode across the room to stand in front of the screen, all but apoplectic.

 "What have you done? What did you transmit?" He rounded on his staff. "Don't just stand there! Find out what it was! Trace him!"

 "Ah, there you are, Silrin," said the Doctor up on the screen, beaming happily. "Just the chap. We need to talk."

 "Talk?" snapped Silrin. "You can start by telling me where you are – you cannot hide."

 The Doctor clicked his tongue disapprovingly. "Oh, now, we both know that's not true, don't we, Silrin? Your guardsmen really aren't very efficient. Cheap, I suppose, that's what you get for cutting corners, you know. But I don't actually need to hide any longer, as it happens. That's why I'm calling. I've achieved what I set out to do – it's all over."

 "What do you mean?" There was a note of foreboding in Silrin's voice now. "What have you done?"

 "I'm glad you asked."

 The Doctor was grinning from ear to ear, which meant he either knew he had the upper hand or he was bluffing on no cards because something had gone wrong; either was equally likely, in Harry's experience.

 "I've been looking through your files, Silrin," he continued in a conversational tone. "The sealed ones, you understand, they weren't quite as well sealed as you thought they were. It was all rather illuminating, to say nothing of scandalous – I can see why you wouldn't want that information to fall into the wrong hands…or the right hands, I should say. Tut, tut, tut," there was that disapproving click of the tongue again. "Falsified reports, misappropriation of government funding, fraud, corruption, embezzlement –"

 "Lies!" Silrin burst out. "All lies!" He rounded on his staff again. "Haven't you traced him yet?"

 "I'm afraid not," the Doctor coolly continued. "On either count. And, of course, all that's before we even begin to consider the unlawful appropriation of an occupied planet and the devastation of its indigenous population." His voice hardened; Harry had heard that particular note of controlled outrage from him before, usually shortly before he unleashed his own particular brand of devastation upon his opponents. "Of course, I haven't had a great deal of time to browse," he continued. "Barely scratched the surface, but as good fortune would have it, someone else had already done the bulk of the legwork for me. You were right, Silrin." He winked. "You do have a spy in your camp."

 "What?" Silrin became very still.

 Up on the screen, the Doctor raised a hand – displaying Talib's data storage device, held between the thumb and forefinger, which meant that Roba had reached him safely. Harry felt himself sag with relief, ever so slightly, and hoped his reaction wasn't too obvious.

 "It's all on here," said the Doctor. "All those nasty little secrets you didn't want your people to learn."

 "You have transmitted that data to Tarse." It was a statement, not a question.

 "I have."

 "And you really believe this will have any effect." Silrin's tone was defiant now – too defiant. He was clutching at straws.

 "I do," the Doctor calmly replied. "I've been through your records, Silrin, all those communiques from home – your people were already ripe for revolt; I've simply given them a push. How long do you think the company will last, now that the truth is out – or the government, for that matter? And what do you think will happen to you, when they fall? Where does the buck stop, Silrin?"

 You could have heard a pin drop in the command centre. Every eye was fixed upon the screen, the Doctor the centre of attention.

 "Besides," he cheerfully continued. "Do you really think that's the only trick I've got up my sleeve?"

 "What?" Silrin found his voice again.

 The Doctor grinned. "Do you play chess, Silrin? No, I don't suppose you do –"

 "This is not a game," Silrin thundered.

 "No, it isn't," the Doctor coldly agreed.

 "I still control this operation. From here, we can ride out any storm –"

 "Yes, I rather thought you might say that," the Doctor interrupted. "So, since I was digging around in your computer systems anyway, I took the opportunity to do a bit of creative programming, while I was at it."

 "Sir!" one of the Tarsin technicians chipped in. "We've traced the alien's signal to the secondary server room, shall we send –?"

 "Not now!" Silrin waved the man away, a note of dread entering his voice as he stared up at the screen. "Creative programming…? Explain!"

 "A coded virus, embedded deep within the vital systems of this moon base." The smile was gone now; the Doctor's expression deadly serious. "I told you, Silrin: it's over. You have ten hours – ten hours before it all shuts down, every system, great and small. Order an evacuation."

 "A bluff…"

 "I'm not bluffing."

 "Call it off!"

 "Too late for that – it's over, Silrin. Evacuate your people. Take them home to face the music."

 Silrin span around, gestured angrily, and Harry was suddenly shoved forward, stumbling at the abruptness of this manhandling, to stand alongside the Tarsin leader, a guard at his shoulder, a gun to his head. A hostage, to be bartered against the salvation of the Lindosian people – and he'd seen the Doctor back down before now when his friends were threatened, squirmed desperately at the thought that it may happen again here, because of him.

 "Call it off," Silrin repeated. "Or your associate will be killed."

 "No, don't. Don't!" Roba suddenly appeared in front of the Doctor, jumping up and down, frantic, and in spite of everything Harry found himself smiling at the sight of the boy, relieved to have visual confirmation of his safety, touched by his concern. He rather distantly wondered that he wasn't more afraid, since Silrin was quite capable of carrying out his threat and he really didn't want to die…but he did want Roba's people to be free.

 He also trusted, more completely than he'd really ever realised, that the Doctor would have more tricks up his sleeve. Since setting out on these adventures in the TARDIS much that he'd once been sure of had been turned on its head, but if there was one thing he'd learned to have faith in it was that the Doctor always had another trick up his sleeve.

 "It's all right, Roba, there's no need to worry." The Doctor gently pushed the boy out of sight once more, smiled a very grim smile as he met Harry's eyes. "Enjoying Silrin's hospitality again, I see, Harry. Don't suppose you've been offered any refreshments yet?"

 This was a familiar game; Harry played along, confident that the message would be received and understood: _don't worry about me, do what you have to do_. "Not yet, Doctor."

 "No, I didn't get any, either. Terribly inconsiderate, don't you think?" The Doctor's tone was jovial, but his expression was serious as he maintained the eye contact. Was he bluffing or not? Would he back down or stand firm? Harry couldn't tell.

 "Yes, very rude –" He broke off as the gun moved from his temple to press up under his chin, and bit his lip, furious with himself for putting the Doctor in this position when so much was at stake. "I'm sorry, Doctor."

 "Not your fault, Harry," said the Doctor, and he was at his most inscrutable now. "And I'm sorry, too, because it really is too late. You said it yourself, Silrin: this isn't a game. The virus is already spreading, eating away at your vital systems – you can't afford to waste any time. Evacuate your people before it's too late."

 "And if I don't?" Silrin demanded, and the muzzle of the gun was still digging into Harry's throat, the guard just waiting for the command to fire.

 "Ten hours," the Doctor repeated. "Ten hours and every system in this base will shut down, including life support."

 "Then we will all die – including you, including your associate here, including the slaves you claim such concern for."

 "Not if you evacuate first," the Doctor pointed out with a nonchalant shrug. "There's plenty of time to make a clean getaway. Don't you want to go home?"

 "No! Not like this." There was that note of defiance again. "Return home having failed…no. I won't! So call it off. I mean what I say – call it off or your associate will be shot, right here and right now." And although the guard at Harry's shoulder actually seemed rather more hesitant than he had a minute ago, the pressure of the gun at his chin easing slightly, still Harry braced himself for the shot that seemed imminent, no longer knowing what to think or expect or even to hope for, while Silrin spat, "Don't you care if your friend dies?"

 "Well, I'd rather you didn't harm him, if it's all the same to you," said the Doctor, and there was steel behind the nonchalance of his voice. "But it won't make any difference, either way. This base will cease to function whatever anyone here does now, which renders this debate somewhat moot, don't you agree? Give the order, Silrin. Evacuate the base, take your people home and tell them it's for their own good – you know, Tarse would never have been granted entry into the Interstellar Trade Pact while your wealth remained dependent on the enslavement of an occupied world, they have very strict rules about that kind of thing."

 The Doctor had mentioned chess earlier, but it was poker that Harry suddenly found himself thinking about, standing there with that gun digging into the soft flesh under his chin. He remembered playing poker at medical school a few times, and again with some of the chaps at Faslane while he'd been stationed there; he'd never been terribly good at the game, never had mastered the trick of being able to see who was bluffing, or predict who'd fold first, and that came to mind now because this standoff reminded him of those games – with added life-or-death stakes. Who was bluffing who? Who would back down first?

 The atmosphere in the command centre had changed. Before there had been an air of crisis, but the bustle of the staff had been purposeful, controlled – they had jobs to do and were getting on with them. Now, though, an air of tension and anxiety had taken hold; they'd all heard the Doctor's claims, and had also heard their leader's reckless defiance. Harry remembered what Talib had said earlier about his colleagues here at the moon base, motivated by financial need rather than belief in any cause. Just how loyal could Silrin expect them to be, now that the company they worked for was in collapse and their lives in danger?

 "You don't care if your friend dies?" Silrin pushed the guard aside, caught hold of the gun himself, and suddenly the stakes were that bit different again, because Silrin was quite capable of pulling the trigger out of sheer spite and for no better reason than that, Harry had no doubt of it. Up on the screen he saw the Doctor twitch, just enough to reveal the disquiet beneath that casual demeanour, knew that the Time Lord was on the point of backing down – if that were even possible – and suddenly he was speaking up almost without realising it.

 "Er, can I say something?"

 "Be silent," Silrin snapped. "This does not concern you."

 Speaking as the man with a gun pressed to his carotid, Harry begged to differ. "I rather think it does," he ventured. It concerned him a great deal, in fact, and in more ways than one. "You see, the thing is…" He swallowed nervously. "The thing is: killing me won't really get you anywhere, will it? I'd be dead, certainly, but the virus would still be there, and you'd have lost your leverage without gaining anything." Silence – he had Silrin's attention, tried pressing it a little further. "So it seems rather a waste of effort, in fact. You'd only be postponing the inevitable. So why not simply give it up as a bad job and head home while you still can, eh?"

 The Doctor smiled, although his eyes were grim. "I couldn't have put it better myself. So what's it to be, Silrin?"

 Silrin seethed; even the breath hissing in and out of that beak-like snout sounded angry, his fingers fidgeting on the trigger. He was close enough that Harry could possibly shoulder-check his way out of immediate danger, taking the man by surprise, but in a room full of agitated Tarsins, most of them armed, he wouldn't get very far unless they could be swayed into full-blown mutiny against their unbalanced Proctor. He waited, painfully conscious of his own heightened heart rate and shallow breathing, a clear indication of stress that belied the peculiar calm he felt.

 A moment later Silrin shoved him aside, his focus shifting in another direction entirely, and Harry caught at the edge of a console with his cuffed hands to regain his balance, sucked in deep, long breaths that were pure relief – short-lived relief, as it turned out.

 "What about the mutts, then?" Silrin spat the words at the Doctor's image on the view-screen, a manic undertone to his voice. "If I refuse to leave, if your virus takes hold – would you see them die, simply to punish me? Well, fine. Fine, then. Let them die. Why wait? You there," he swung around to holler at a technician sitting at a console nearby, "Turn it off – life support in the mine, turn it off, do it now."

 "But sir," the technician protested. "We have guardsmen down there…"

 "Don't be a fool, Silrin," the Doctor called from the view-screen, and his casual demeanour, Harry noticed with a start, had dissolved into alarm. He hadn't anticipated this.

 But he'd have something else up his sleeve. He always did – didn't he?

 "Must I do everything myself?" Silrin pushed the technician out of the way, hurled himself at the console, pressing buttons and flicking switches, and then swung around again, a mad glint in his eye and a triumphant curl to his lip. "There, Doctor – can you save your precious slaves now?"

 dwdwdwdwdw

 


	6. Meltdown

"Keep moving," Sarah gasped to Emera as they sprinted aimlessly through the tunnels. She'd lost all sense of direction, had no idea where they were going or where they'd been, if they were heading toward relative safety or greater danger, if they'd lost anyone along the way in these tunnels that never ended, or if they were going around in circles, even. She only knew that they were being pursued – and shot at – and had to keep moving.

 And that she'd been right: it was impossible to move stealthily with a group this size, especially through narrow and dimly-lit, winding little tunnels like these with armed guards in hot pursuit.

 Another flash and crack from behind; it didn't sound as if anyone had been hit this time. At least two of the escaping slaves had fallen already, maybe more, she couldn't tell.

 There was nowhere to hide.

 And then there was something else, a subtle change that she only slowly became aware of, preoccupied as she was by the pounding of her feet and her heart and the blood through her veins. There'd been a humming sound, very faint, the whole time she'd been in the mines – a kind of vibration, droning through the walls and the floor of the place, a constant background hum that she'd barely even been aware of until now, and even now it wasn't the hum itself that she'd become aware of, but its absence.

 It had stopped.

 Hurling herself around a corner, Sarah thought that something else had changed, too. The atmosphere was thinning, the air becoming stuffy, and she half-believed she was imagining it because she was out of puff anyway from running too hard for too long, so of course it was hard to breathe, she hadn't run like this since being dragooned into cross-country races during her school days, and that was years ago now, she must be more out of shape than she'd realised…

 It wasn't her imagination. There was something wrong with the air, with the life support system – she'd been aboard a space station with the life support switched off before, she recognised the feeling only too well, wondered desperately how long the air could possibly last if she was already aware of the lack of it.

 But why would the sky raiders turn the atmosphere off when they had guards down here? Was putting down a slave rebellion so important that they were prepared to kill their own people to achieve it? Or was there something else going on up in the moon base – something to do with the Doctor, perhaps?

 Perhaps there was an explanation, but she couldn't wonder about it any longer, not when it was taking all the strength she had to keep moving. The Lindosians were slowing, worn out from the chase and the thinning air. Were the guards still in pursuit? She could no longer tell.

 Gulping in whatever air she could, Sarah caught hold of Emera's arm and plunged onward.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 Sarah was in the mines.

 Harry didn't know that for sure, but he was certain enough. Sarah was in the mines with the slaves and their alleged insurrection, and the life support system had been switched off down there.

 And the Doctor had vanished from the view-screen.

 Confusion reigned in the command centre. It had to be evident by now to every Tarsin present that Proctor Silrin was a sandwich or two short of a picnic, but they didn't seem to have any clear idea what to do about it.

 The guardsman at Harry's side had lowered his guard. And the console controlling the life support system was nearby, unattended now.

 Harry didn't stop to think beyond that point. He simply acted: shoulder-charging the guard aside and then throwing himself at the console. It was pointless and he knew it, deep down. He had no idea how to operate the controls and his hands were still tightly cuffed behind his back, so that he couldn't even see what he was doing. But he had to try, for Sarah's sake.

 Something hard and heavy impacted at the base of his skull within seconds and he fell to the ground, seeing stars, dimly aware of shouting and kerfuffle…

 It might have been seconds, minutes or even hours later that his blurry vision and foggy brain began to clear and he gradually became aware that Talib was standing over him, brandishing a gun and railing furiously at his colleagues…several of whom also had guns trained on him – still on Silrin's side, then.

 "Don't be fools!" Talib's voice was hoarse, desperate. "Didn't you hear? The company is gone, the government is gone – this base is collapsing. You don't have to follow the Proctor's orders any longer. Choose for yourselves – choose to live! Choose not to kill your own people. We have men down there, good men. Would you let them die?"

 It was quite a speech, but as he slowly struggled to an awkward sitting position – easier said than done with his hands bound – Harry looked up and saw panic in Talib's eyes, and no wonder. It had to be taking every ounce of courage he had to finally break cover and nail his colours to the mast like this for all to see, standing up in opposition to his peoples' entire objective here, after maintaining the secrecy of his position for so very long.

 Silrin bellowed abuse at Talib for being a traitor, demanded of his staff that they not return home as failures, and no one seemed to know what to do. How long could the people in the mine last without life support? The air already circulating should keep them going for a time, at least, if Harry's experience at Nerva Space Station was anything to judge by, but it wouldn't last forever. He glanced up at the view-screen. There was still no sign of the Doctor. Where could he have got to?

 "Come on, use your brains," Talib shouted, the fear in his voice giving way to exasperation. "Would you rather die than think for yourselves? Would you let your workmates die – your friends?"

 For a too-long moment it seemed the impasse would hold, but at last, one by one, the Tarsins scattered around the room began to lower their weapons, swayed by Talib's impassioned pleas – and possibly also by their innate sense of self-preservation. Silrin shouted a few more furious threats and then ran from the room and there was a sudden flurry of movement, technicians descending upon the console that controlled life support.

 Harry wriggled out of the way, quick-smart, before he could be trampled, and then Talib was pulling him to his feet and fumbling at his wrists to unlock the cuffs, muttering anxious apologies for allowing his capture in the first place.

 "Well, I hardly see what you could have done about it." Freed, Harry tried rubbing some life back into his numb wrists and gingerly prodded at the lump on the back of his head. "I'm just glad you showed up when you did. Shouldn't we –"

 "Sir, there's a problem," one of the technicians interrupted, and it took everyone a moment to realise she was talking to Talib.

 "Don't call me sir. I'm not in charge," he protested, and then asked, "What's wrong?"

 "The controls are not responding – we can't restore life support to our guardsmen in the mine."

 There were more people in the mines than just the guardsmen, Harry wanted to point out, but Talib was already responding, his tone brisk and efficient.

 "Get on the radio, then – find out where they are, if they can evacuate – send someone down there with breathing units to help them, if you must!"

 "Excellent suggestion – you'd make a splendid sergeant, Talib – but all that really won't be necessary," a hearty voice boomed out, and Harry span around to see the Doctor standing in the doorway, grinning.

 "Doctor." Relief brought a smile to his face, which broadened as Roba pushed past the Doctor and ran across the room – a room full of dreaded sky raiders, moreover – to fling his arms around his waist. "Oh, I say – steady on, old chap," he muttered, ruffling the boy's hair and patting his shoulder, rather more pleased than he might have expected to be greeted so fondly.

 "You're looking well, Harry," the Doctor lightly remarked as an aside as he strolled casually into the room, nodding at the confused Tarsins, and that was likely as close as he'd ever get to mentioning the tense standoff they'd just been through. "You see," he continued, addressing Talib and his colleagues once more. "I took the liberty of accessing the life support controls from the secondary server room to re-engage the atmospheric system in the mine, and remotely disabled that console in case anyone else felt inclined to meddle. It won't last indefinitely, though, any of it, so you might want to order an immediate evacuation of the base – it's time you people went home, don't you think?"

 "Then the virus is real?" one of the technicians anxiously asked.

 "Very real."

 The Tarsins exchanged worried looks.

 "Don't just stand there," Talib shouted. "Someone give the order! Oh, where's the intercom – I'll do it myself."

 While Talib started bustling around, organising his colleagues, Harry turned to the Doctor. "Doctor, about Sarah –"

 "Now, there's no time to lose, Harry," the Doctor declared, cutting across what he was trying to say. "I think we can trust our friend Talib to see to the Tarsin evacuation, but Silrin's still on the loose, I can't imagine he'll give up so easily, and we'll need to see about the Lindosian prisoners as well – and of course there's Sarah to think of –"

 "Yes, about Sarah, Doctor –"

 "I can't think where she might have got to – you humans, always wandering off –"

 "Sarah's in the mine, Doctor," Harry loudly interrupted, since simply coming out and saying it was clearly the only way he was going to get the Doctor's attention.

 The Doctor's eyes went wide – well, wider. "In the mine?"

 "Well, I think so, anyway." A new alarm was sounding, a computer voice proclaiming the evacuation order, and Harry hurriedly moved out of the way of the Tarsin technicians as they rushed out of the room. "That Silrin chap mentioned some kind of insurrection – a slave uprising…"

 "That sounds like Sarah."

 "Well, that's what I thought."

 "Then why didn't you say so in the first place?"

 Since he'd been trying to do just that all along, Harry was rendered almost speechless with indignation by this question, and then was distracted by a strange wheezing sound nearby. It was Talib – the Tarsin equivalent of laughter, it seemed. "So there was another of you after all," he chuckled. "Oh, well played, my friend. You fooled us."

 "Yes, he does have his moments, doesn't he," the Doctor agreed with a beaming smile, and Harry wasn't entirely sure what he was implying but chose to take it as a compliment. Then the Doctor said, "We'll need to round up the Lindosians, Harry, and get them back down to Lindos – if Sarah's with them, that'll save us –"

 Yet another alarm interrupted, a different one again, one of the computer terminals lighting up like a Christmas tree, and there were no technicians left in the room to attend to it. The Doctor and Talib rushed over and started gabbling at one another in furious, technical gobbledygook.

 "What is it?" Harry followed them, Roba clinging tightly to his arm, wide-eyed and silent.

 "It's the reactor." That glint of panic had returned to Talib's eye. "There's something wrong with the reactor – is it the virus you planted, has it caused this?"

 The Doctor looked deeply troubled, which was worrying. He hadn't anticipated this, either.  "No. No, this isn't the virus. It wouldn't have anything like this effect and we should have hours yet, plenty of time – besides, I built in a fail-safe, it can be shut down at any time if need be." So it had been a bluff…of sorts; Harry wondered why he was surprised. "But this…this is something different. No, this is Silrin's handiwork. It seems he's not about to let anyone go without a fight."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 The hum was back, Sarah noted with great relief, and the air felt lighter and more breathable already. It was the first good thing that had happened since the Doctor disappeared.

 The sky raiders seemed to have lost track of them, as well. That was another good thing.

 Just up ahead, the tunnel she was hurrying down opened out into a much wider space, which was worrying, because open ground did not feel safe just at present – who could tell what the sky raiders might do next? Every instinct she possessed was telling her to find somewhere to hide. Hide and re-group; breathing room to think, to plan the next move.

 There were other passages opening off that cavern, so she kept moving, dashing across the worrisome open ground into the slightly more reassuring confines of another tunnel, urging the escaped Lindosian prisoners along.

 Was everyone present and correct? She had no idea. They were fretful and angry, frightened and unsure, and she had no idea how to reassure them or what they should do for the best. She no longer even knew which direction might lead up to the moon base and which led only deeper into the mines. They were hopelessly lost.

 And this tunnel was a dead end.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 "But why?" wondered Harry, watching helplessly as the Doctor worked feverishly at the console. "Why would Silrin sabotage the base? What does he hope to gain?"

 "I don't believe gain is what he has in mind, Harry," said the Doctor, frowning worriedly, "Quite the opposite, in fact. No, it's no good – I can't undo the damage from here. I'll have to head for the reactor core itself." He made a thoughtful moue. "Probably too late to prevent total meltdown, but I can buy us some time – enough to get everyone away."

 "You'll need help," Talib immediately offered, but the Doctor shook his head.

 "No, I need you two – I'm sorry, Roba, you _three_ – to oversee the evacuation, make sure everyone gets away safely."

 "You can't go alone, Doctor," Harry argued, an automatic, instinctive protest, but the Doctor shook his head and clamped a heavy hand on his shoulder, looked him straight in the eye, sombre and sincere.

 "I need you to find Sarah, Harry – and this young man's mother, and all the other Lindosian prisoners. Get them into a transport vessel and take them down to Lindos – don't wait for me. I'll find my own way. Get them to safety. I can rely on you, can't I?"

 "Of course, Doctor," Harry promised, struck by the solemnity of this mission…and then his brain registered the words his ears had just heard, and panic set in. "Oh, I say – me? Fly a transport vessel?" The very idea was ludicrous.

 "Well, Talib can't do it – his ride is going in the other direction entirely," the Doctor mildly pointed out.

 "Yes, but –"

 "And you can drive a car, can't you?"

 "Well, yes, but –"

 "Well, there you are, then. The principle is much the same – simpler, in fact, because this system is fully automated, so really the computer does all the work for you. Don't look so worried, man. Now, this is what you'll need to do…"

 dwdwdwdwdw

 "What can we do?"

 "You said there would be a way – that we might drive the sky raiders away, and be free once more."

 "There is no way to escape, we are trapped here."

 "What will we do? Where can we go?"

 "I don't know, let me think!" Sarah pulled away from the fretful accusations of the escaped Lindosian prisoners, rested her forehead against the cool stone of the tunnel wall and tried to think. What could they do?

 This tunnel was a dead end. Somewhere behind them, armed sky raider guards were still lurking in the mine, probably not very far away. They were lost, with no idea which way might take them out of the mine – and even if they could find the way, there would be even more sky raiders waiting there for them, blocking their path to freedom. All they had were their bare hands and that single gun, still tucked into Sarah's belt in case it proved useful, somehow.

 She'd given these people hope and then they'd acted on it and watched it turn to dust, and she wanted to blame them for that because she hadn't intended them to do it, but she couldn't blame them because fighting for freedom was something she believed in, always had, even when it seemed hopeless. So they were her responsibility now. Where could she take them where they'd be safe?

 "We can't stay here," she said, because that much she did know, they couldn't defend themselves in a bottleneck of a dead-end like this. "But if we go back, back to that larger cave, there was another passage we can try. Come on, quick, before the guards catch up with us."

 They followed her lead without question, even now, somehow trusting that she knew what she was doing. She wished she could be so certain that she did.

 It wasn't far back to the point where the tunnel opened out into that cavern that had worried her earlier, which had two more tunnels forking off it – the one they'd come along a few minutes earlier and the second that they were going to have to try now.

 "Over there." She pointed, keeping her voice low. "Hurry."

 The Lindosians began to scurry across the cave into that other passage.

 Sarah hung back to make sure everyone made it across safely and bring up the rear, and they'd nearly all made it when suddenly there were shouts and running footsteps to warn that sky raiders were approaching from the other tunnel, and they needed more time – just a bit more time to get across and get away, get out of sight, if not to safety.

 She pulled out the gun and fired in the direction of the approaching guards, a warning shot, because it was all she could think to do that might slow the pursuit even just a bit, and the gun bucked and jerked in her hand, surprisingly powerful for such a small sidearm.

 The energy bolt crashed into the cave wall, just inside the tunnel entrance opposite, sending chips of friable rock flying through the air like shrapnel, and the Lindosians reacted with fear and consternation.

 "Keep going, faster," she shouted, but it was no good, they were out of time.

 They weren't going to make it.

 Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion now. Emera was running across the cave to follow the other Lindosians down the escape tunnel, with Olos at her side, and Sarah saw a sky raider guard come into view, leaning around the corner of the other tunnel, bringing his weapon to bear on them.

 She still had the stolen gun in her own hand, whipped it around and fired almost without thinking, aiming for the rock wall alongside his head, another warning shot intended to force him back, to buy the others just a few more seconds to escape.

 But she'd forgotten – already, just moments after firing that first shot – how unpredictably the gun pulled, how hard it was to control. The shot missed its mark, caught the guard head on and he crumpled, even as he fired his own weapon. The energy bolt hit the boy Olos and he collapsed like a puppet with its string cut, just a child who'd wanted nothing more than to go home. Emera cried out in anguish, and the gun dropped from Sarah's hand.

 She felt cold, cold and numb, frozen to the spot as if her feet had taken root.

 There was more noise and more confusion, a bustle of movement and scuffling, someone who wasn't her was shouting orders, and there were things she should be doing. She had people relying on her, she had to get them to safety, but she couldn't seem to move, couldn't seem to think, as if her brain had shorted out, just when she needed it most. Everything around her seemed far, far away and out of focus, the sound muted and indistinct. There were more guards in that tunnel who'd be upon them at any moment, but she couldn't take her eyes off the one she'd just shot, lying sprawled across the dirty rock floor.

  _It's just a monster_ , she tried to tell herself, but in her mind she was hearing the conversation she'd overheard earlier, sky raider guards chatting about shift patterns and their families back home and how much they hated working here, and she knew that they weren't monsters, any more than the humans who'd once kept slaves had been monsters. They were just people – ignorant and thoughtless and cruel, perhaps, but still just people.

 And she'd killed one of them, and she wasn't sure that lump of ice in the pit of her stomach would ever go away.

 "Sarah?" A familiar voice penetrated the fog, a familiar voice that shouldn't be here. "Sarah, are you all right, old thing?"

 Sarah blinked, and suddenly Harry was there, gripping her arms and peering worriedly into her face. Where had he come from?

 "Harry. I shot the guard," she told him, stupidly, and he glanced over his shoulder.

 "Yes, so I see. Are you all right? You look awfully pale."

 "I killed him." She could hear a note of near hysteria in her own voice. "I didn't mean to. He shot Olos and I killed him."

 She'd never killed anyone before. Was this how it felt? How did serial killers stand it?

 "He isn't dead, Sarah," said Harry, and that made no sense. "Neither of them – look, take a seat before you fall over, just there, that's it. Easy does it. Try to breathe. Sit tight and I'll be back in two ticks."

 There it was: that soothing bedside manner that he usually knew better than to try on her these days; she must look even worse than she felt. She wanted to protest, the way she normally would, but nothing was cooperating at the moment – not her voice and not her brain, it was like trying to think through treacle – so she followed Harry's advice and sat down on the ground and watched him bustling around, calm and professional the way he had been when they first met, back at UNIT when the Doctor was comatose following his regeneration and no one knew what to do about it. Harry knew where he was when there were medical emergencies and people in need of care for him to focus on, she rather distantly reflected; it was just everything outside of his professional comfort zone that he struggled with.

 Olos lay limp and still nearby, but he'd been moved into a recovery position. Harry bent over him, checking vitals, and then spoke to Emera, who was still at the boy's side. Roba was there too, clinging to Emera, who was holding him tight, and that was significant, it mattered, but Sarah couldn't seem to focus on why; it was as if she was looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope, white noise ringing in her ears.

 The other Lindosians were trickling back from the tunnel they'd escaped down, looking tense and uncomfortable, and Harry spoke rapidly to them, hands waving to illustrate his point. Across the cave, the downed guard had also been made comfortable, several other guards clustered around him, talking furiously. The Lindosians were keeping their distance, wary and frightened, but they weren't running and the sky raiders weren't chasing or shooting at them, not any more, and she wondered what she'd missed – and how she could have been in such a fugue that she'd managed to miss it.

 "Feeling any better now, then?"

 Between blinks, Harry was back, squatting to peer into her face again, in full-blown doctor mode now. In the dim light of the mine, the sharp planes of his lean, angular face were accentuated, giving him a stern, patrician look that was completely at odds with his good-hearted nature, and he was wearing a frown that only added to that impression…but then she realised that the reason he was frowning was because he'd asked her a question and she hadn't replied, had just sat and stared at him instead. What was wrong with her?

 "Touch of shock, I'd say," Harry said, answering her unspoken question. "Come on, buck up, old bean. You know, if we were back in my sick bay I'd give you a tranquiliser and send you to bed, but we aren't, so…"

 Old bean.

 "Old _bean_? Honestly, Harry, of all the –" The protest came automatically, indignation loosening her tongue at last…but then she saw the look on his face and knew he'd done it on purpose this time, to provoke exactly that reaction. It had worked, as well, and she was annoyed with herself for being so predictable.

 Like a rubber band snapping back into shape, the world was suddenly in focus again. That sense of horror was still there, a lingering sourness at the back of her throat and the pit of her stomach, but the fog was lifting, she could think again now, so she took a deep breath and then calmly insisted that she did not need a tranquiliser, thanks all the same.

 "Jolly glad to hear it," said Harry.

 "Although I wouldn't say no to a good night's sleep," she had to admit. Now that the immediate danger appeared to be over somehow – the Doctor had done something, of course he had, it was just a question of what and where was he – now that someone else was there to share the load, she was beginning to realise just how exhausted she was, a weariness that ran bone-deep.

 "I know the feeling." Harry flashed a rueful smile at her, and she wondered just how long ago the last good night's sleep had been for either of them. Not since they'd left UNIT, probably, and how long ago had that been, subjectively speaking? She tried to work it out and couldn't. Nerva Space Station, the future Earth, Skaro, then Nerva again, running from one desperate battle to another, catching whatever sleep they could in brief snatches here and there…no wonder she was so tired – and no wonder Harry looked as tired as she felt.

 "Are they really still alive?" she quietly asked, looking again at the guard she'd shot, lying still and unmoving at the centre of a sky raider huddle, the other guards busily fashioning some kind of impromptu stretcher for him, as far as she could tell. Would they do that for a corpse?

 "Very," Harry confirmed with a nod. "Both guns were set to stun, apparently – just as well the fellows down here didn't get the message about lethal measures, really. Of course, they didn't hear the evacuation order, either, or they'd have given up the chase a lot sooner…"

 "That was my fault," a new voice interjected, and Sarah gasped as one of the sky raiders appeared at Harry's side, clapping a hand to his shoulder as if they were old friends. "I'd forgotten that the mine is on a separate intercom system – communications are not my field. Harry, we cannot linger any longer, we must hurry."

 "Of course," Harry nodded. "Are you ready to go, Sarah? We'll need to move fast. I'll round everyone up."

 "Go where, Harry? Where's the –?" she began to ask, frustrated at being so out of the loop, but he was gone again already, leaving her alone with the sky raider, who bared his teeth at her in a peculiar grimace that took several seconds to identify as the sky raider equivalent of a smile.

 "I am sorry for your distress," he said, and offered a hand to help her up. Still confused as to where this turnaround had come from, she refused the hand and scrambled back to her feet under her own power, deciding that it was high time she pulled herself together and got a handle on the situation.

 "Can you tell me what's going on?" she demanded, keeping one very wary eye on the sky raider and the other on Harry as he gently lifted young Olos into his arms and called the frightened and confused Lindosians to gather around him.

 "We are evacuating." Well, as answers went, it was concise, at least.

 "We?"

 "Everyone – my people, the native people, all – but there is no time to lose, so be quick." He whirled around and darted back to his men as they lifted their improvised stretcher bearing the unconscious guard. "Come along – move quickly, this way!"

 "Follow the guards," Harry called to the Lindosians in a surprisingly authoritative voice as the sky raiders moved on out of the cave, back along that tunnel they'd first come through. "Don't be afraid, you won't be harmed. We're taking you home." Resembling nothing so much as a harassed mother-hen, he began to chivvy them along as best he could with his arms full of unconscious teenager.

 Emera was still in the thick of it, encouraging her people along, with Roba at her side still, and… "Of course," Sarah softly breathed, wondering why she hadn't realised sooner. The resemblance was obvious, once you knew to look for it, and she was only sorry she'd missed the moment of reunion, hastened to talk to them now that she knew.

 "My son is here. He's here!" Emera called as she approached, sounding unsure whether to be delighted or furious.

 "I found her, Sarah, I found her!" Roba's eyes were wide and disbelieving, and Emera gave him a shake and scolded that he shouldn't have come and then hugged him again, and Sarah caught the other woman's eyes and saw in them her continued grief over the charnel pit they'd found and the despair she'd felt at being separated from her children, her joy at being reunited with one of them, and fear at finding him here, of all places.

 She gave them both a hug, delighted that they had their happy ending – but also concerned, because was it a happy ending, really? That was the question.

 She hurried to catch up with Harry, suddenly worried, because it felt as if this was all over bar the shouting, somehow, and yet she knew it wasn't, couldn't be, not least because there was such an air of urgency about both Harry and that sky raider, however cool, calm and confident they were trying to appear.

 They weren't out of the woods yet – not even out of the mine yet – and there was still no sign of the Doctor…no, there was definitely still something going on, some other shoe just waiting to drop.

 "So what's the plan, Stan?" Keeping her tone light, she fell into stride alongside Harry as he half-jogged along at a pace that only served to reinforce her suspicions. "Are you going to tell me what's going on? Where's the Doctor?"

 "He told me to take them down to the planet." Harry carefully adjusted his grip on Olos, and now that she was looking for it she could read acute anxiety in his eyes, in the taut set of his face, and the tension in his shoulders. "The natives, all of them – are there any more? We have to get them down to Lindos. The Tarsins are evacuating back to their world, and –"

 "The who-sins?" She had to trot to keep up with him.

 "The sky raiders, that's what they're called."

 An evacuation was a good thing, surely. Getting the Lindosians home and the sky raiders – or Tarsins, or whatever – to leave…it was what they wanted. So why did she have such a nasty sinking feeling?

 "Harry, where's the Doctor?"

 Worried side-eyes flicked in her direction. "Some kind of problem with the reactor, apparently – deliberate sabotage, or some such. He's gone to see what he can do, and he told me to get everyone away."

 "In case he can't fix it?" The other shoe hit the ground, and there was that cold feeling again, deep in the pit of her stomach. "Harry, where is it? Tell me where to go."

 Harry shook his head. "The Doctor said you were to evacuate with everyone else, Sarah, he wants everyone out of harm's way."

 "Well, the Doctor can whistle for that, then, because I'm not leaving him alone," she retorted. "He'll need help. You can manage without me, can't you?"

 "Well…"

 "Please, Harry. Just tell me where I can find him."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 "He was heading for the reactor chamber – Talib can show you the way," Harry repeated as their untidy convoy of confused guardsmen and frightened former slaves exited the mine back into the moon base proper, where the evacuation alarm was still loudly sounding to add to the general air of chaos, a strident, insistent reminder of how little time they may have left, if the Doctor couldn't work whatever miracle he was attempting. "But are you sure you don't want to –"

 He didn't even get to finish the sentence. Sarah cut him off with an impatient, "Of course I'm sure, Harry," and that was that. He could no more stop her doing what she wanted than he could nail fog to a wall, could only admire her spirit and resilience – and the trouble was, of course, that although he was reluctant to let her out of sight, having only just found her again, he didn't actually feel that she was wrong. Someone should be there to help the Doctor, and it couldn't be him, not with this mission he'd been given.

 "Well, goodbye then, my friend." While Sarah said hasty farewells to her Lindosian friend and young Roba, Talib turned to Harry with a curious contortion of his beak that appeared to approximate a smile. "And thank you."

 "The pleasure was all mine," Harry assured him, with a nod and a smile since he couldn't shake hands, his arms full of a young Lindosian boy who'd been stunned, and then Talib was off, ushering the guards from the mine away in the direction of the deep space trawler that was to take them home. Sarah hurried after them.

 "Be careful, Harry," she called over her shoulder. "And good luck!"

 "You be careful yourself, old thing," he shouted after her, and she was gone.

 Harry turned back to the rag-tag band of former slaves they'd collected from the mine, including two more as unconscious as this boy – shot during their escape attempt, apparently, and now being carried with some difficulty by their fellows. There were still more locked away in a barrack block not far from here, he'd been told, and then it was only a short journey from there to the hangar where he'd find the transport vessel to take them all home.

 He hoped, with every fibre of his being, that he would remember the careful directions he'd been given, and was trying hard not to think about the next step after that. He was a doctor, not a pilot – what did he know about flying anything, still less a spacecraft, of all things?

 One step at a time – and the clock was ticking.

 "We're going home now?" asked Roba, eyes bright with hope and trust. He'd swapped Harry's arm for that of his mother and was clinging tight, their joyful reunion the one bright spot in all this chaos and confusion. Harry owed it to them to get this right.

 "We are," he agreed. "Come on, let's go."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 'This is Talib, he's on our side,' Harry had said about his sky raider friend, and Sarah still didn't know how any of that had happened, so she just had to trust that the creature would be as good as his word and take her to the Doctor.

 Jogging along after a group of guards – what had Harry called them? Tarsins – felt deeply uncomfortable, after spending so much time avoiding them as the enemy. They seemed very intent on their evacuation now, though, urged along by the strident clang of the alarm bell that formed a constant soundtrack to their journey.

 They reached a junction in the corridor and Talib turned to her. "This is as far as we can take you – the reactor chamber is that way. Turn left and then right and you will see it."

 "And that's definitely where the Doctor was going?"

 "To repair the damage enough to delay meltdown, if not prevent it – he hopes to at least buy enough time for us to complete the evacuation, but don't let him delay too long." There was an urgent sincerity about the alien now. "Good luck."

 He sped away. Sarah drew a deep breath as she headed in the opposite direction, along the corridor he'd indicated. Left, and then right, and then there it was – a large room containing a set of hefty-looking double doors marked with a very obvious warning sign. Alongside the doors was a complicated computer console…with which the Doctor was wrestling.

 "Doctor!" The alarm was louder than ever in here, a shrill, insistent warning of the critical danger about to engulf the base, and the Doctor looked about as agitated as she'd seen him, which was never a good sign, and yet the wave of relief that crashed over her just at the sight of him was overwhelming.

 He glanced up, surprised. "Sarah! I told Harry to take you down to Lindos."

 "Well, Harry isn't the boss of me," she retorted. "And neither are you. Are you all right? What's going on?"

 "The reactor core's going into overload." Straight down to business; he never had been one for small talk when there was an emergency at hand. "I've tried increasing the dampeners to buy us some time, but from here I can only delay the inevitable, and it may not be enough. If I could get my hands on the central servo control there might be a chance, but Silrin's locked himself in there with it," he nodded at those heavy-looking doors. "And the mechanism is jammed." He jabbed furiously at the console again.

 "Who's Silrin?"

 "Harry didn't tell you?"

 "Harry didn't explain anything." She rolled her eyes but tried not to sound too annoyed, since Harry had clearly had bigger things on his mind.

 "Silrin is the Tarsins' leader – here, hold this a minute." He shoved a piece of console casing at her and poked around at the now-exposed circuits.

 "The leader – you mean he's deliberately trying to blow up his own people, as well as the slaves? But why?"

 "It's a long story. I suppose you might say he's having something of a meltdown of his own. Aha!" He jumped back as a shower of sparks exploded from the console and those heavy double doors began to slide open.

 Throwing the loose end of his scarf back over his shoulder, the Doctor strode confidently toward the now open reactor chamber. Sarah scurried after him.

 He stopped at the threshold of the reactor chamber, turned to raise a finger to his lips as a warning to be quiet, as if she couldn't have worked that much out for herself, and then flashed a dazzling smile at her. "It's nice to see you, Sarah." His voice was low. "You really shouldn't have come."

 "Well, I'm here now, aren't I?" She pulled his hat out of her belt and held it out to him, and his face lit up.

 "Thank you." Cramming the hat down over his riot of unruly curls, he jerked his head toward the reactor chamber. "Come on, then – let's get on with it."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 "All aboard," Harry muttered to himself as he pressed the button that would seal the door to the transport vessel's cargo hold.

 As he hurried around to the cockpit, he passed the TARDIS, which had been removed from the transport vessel at some point and then left standing alone in the middle of the hangar bay floor, a prize whose capture had been overtaken by developing events. It was a shame, really. The natives were packed into that cargo hold like sardines in a can, but in the TARDIS there'd be room to spare. If the Doctor and Sarah had been with them, they could have all jumped in and away and there'd be no need to mess around with transport vessels at all.

 But there were still the Tarsins to think of. The reactor hadn't melted down yet – Harry wasn't entirely sure what a meltdown would look like, but was fairly certain he'd know one if he saw it – but that didn't mean it wouldn't, and they may not all be away yet. No, the Doctor was right to try to stop it. He was probably the reason it hadn't gone up already, in fact.

 Probably best not to dwell too heavily on that, though. Harry had enough problems of his own to worry about here.

 He swung himself up into the cockpit and stared in dismay at the dizzying array of controls and display screens that lay before him. There was a reason astronauts required years of training, yet he was expected to fly this thing based on five minutes of hurried instruction?

 He closed his eyes and drew a few deep breaths, tried to relax.

 Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart had personally requested Harry's secondment to UNIT, he remembered. That was back when he'd been stationed at Faslane, and he hadn't been entirely clear at the time just what UNIT was, still less what working there might entail, but he'd jumped at the chance anyway, lured by the mystery and excitement it seemed to promise – and it had certainly delivered on that promise, if not in any way he might have expected!

 It was much the same spirit of adventure that had kept him at the Doctor's side throughout that business with the giant robot, long after the need for his medical attention was at an end. But then he'd stepped across the threshold of the Doctor's TARDIS, and since then his sense of adventure seemed to have been swamped by the struggle to simply put one foot in front of the other in the face of everything he didn't understand – the struggle to stay alive.

 Being absent from duty without permission didn't help, either.

 That day at Faslane when the transfer request came through, he could never in his wildest dreams have imagined he would end up here: at the helm of an alien spaceship, on an alien moon, with a cargo of alien refugees who were relying on him, of all people, to fly them home.

 He thought about Nerva Space Station, where he'd operated cryogenic technology thousands of years more advanced than anything he'd ever seen before, having only seen the procedure carried out once or twice. He never would have thought himself capable of that either, at one time, yet he'd managed it. He'd managed to sabotage the Sontaran's spaceship on the future Earth, as well, after only a verbal description of what to do.

 If he could do that, surely he could do this.

 It was every boy's dream to fly a spaceship, wasn't it?

 The Doctor believed he could do it.

 He looked again at the console and tried to recall the exact sequence Talib had so carefully described, to activate the auto-pilot and set the correct programme. Then he said a prayer, for the first time in almost 20 years.

 Harry had attended church regularly, as a boy. His mother had taken him, every Sunday without fail for as long as she was alive…but then she'd died and he'd never set foot inside that church again; no one had taken him, and he'd never asked. He offered a prayer now, though, to the God his mother had believed in – or maybe to the gods of Lindos that Roba had mentioned. It was a prayer of supplication, _let me get this right_ , for the sake of all those people crammed into the hold, relying on him to save their lives and give them their freedom.

 He reached out and began the ignition sequence Talib had described to him.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 "So what kind of reactor is this, anyway? Nuclear?" Sarah whispered as she followed the Doctor into a massive chamber full of engines, pipes and valves, consoles and display panels, mechanised equipment of all shapes and sizes; a room that was humming the powerful, discordant hum of machinery gone wrong.

 A nuclear reactor meant radiation, which meant that walking in here like this might just be the most stupid thing she'd ever done, except that on the other hand there'd been no sign of protective suits, or any of the other precautions she might have expected to find in a radioactive environment, but she wasn't sure if that was good or bad until the Doctor shook his head.

 "Lupium," he said, looking around intently, his keen eyes searching for something, only he knew what. "It's what they've been mining – an energy rich mineral. The bulk of the mine's output is processed for export back to the homeworld, of course, but a percentage is channelled into powering the base itself." He kept moving as he spoke, now here, now there, examining this valve, that console, then moving on – not what he was looking for. "It's normally an extremely safe power source, that's partly what makes it so very valuable, but it can be highly combustible under the right circumstances."

 "And the right circumstances are what this Silrin of yours is trying to create," Sarah guessed, following as he darted from one piece of machinery to another.

 "He's not _my_ Silrin, Sarah," the Doctor mildly objected, examining a complicated-looking system of pipes and spigots. "But yes. Exactly. You see, with the inherent instability of the…no, no, no, I'll explain later." He raised his voice to address the room at large, his tone becoming harsh and angry. "What really matters is that he's attempting mass murder purely because he's too ashamed to show his face back home after the downfall of the company. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous, so cowardly?"

 "You will not rile me, alien," another voice shouted back from across the room, the speaker hidden behind all the machinery.

 The Doctor glanced in that direction with a shrug. "You know, I rather think I already have – don't you agree, Sarah? Ah, here we are." He was off again.

 "He doesn't sound happy, no," Sarah agreed, peering around on tiptoes trying to catch a glimpse of the mysteriously murderous Silrin before hurrying to catch up with the Doctor. "What are you up to now?"

 "Central servo controls. Trying to re-balance the load – if I can just –" He broke off and ducked as a blaster bolt whizzed past his ear, span around looking angry. "Do you mind, I'm trying to work here, Silrin. There isn't much time."

 "You will cease," came the stentorian command.

 Far from ceasing, the Doctor was already working away at the equipment again, delving deep into the guts of the machinery, but Silrin had emerged from his hiding place now and was heading for them, gun in hand – they were out of time.

 "Doctor!" Sarah hastily elbowed him in the ribs.

 He turned with a sigh. "So we're back to that, are we? Silrin, you've simply got to stop waving guns at my friends, it really doesn't improve anyone's day."

 "I don't think he cares what kind of day we're having, Doctor," Sarah hissed, eyeing the gun warily.

 "Of course he doesn't," the Doctor cheerfully agreed. "That's because however bad a day you think you're having, his has been even worse – isn't that right, Silrin? After all, he was the man in the hot seat when the almighty Lu-Corps came crashing down in ruins and lawsuits, taking an entire planetary regime down with it."

 Sarah frowned. She'd definitely missed something while she was running around trying to find a way out of that mine. "Is that what's happened?"

 "More or less," the Doctor shrugged. "Well, sooner or later, certainly."

 "You have destroyed everything – my life's work," Silrin all but howled, his gun arm shaking.

 "Of course I did. You conquered a populated world and enslaved its indigenous inhabitants, all in the name of profit." The Doctor sounded disgusted. "But it wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway, surely you can see that – the whole thing was a house of cards; all it needed was a nudge. It doesn't have to end like this, Silrin – do you really want to wipe your own people from the face of this moon, cold-blooded murder, simply because you don't want to go home with egg on your face? Think about it, man. It isn't too late."

 "But what about you," Silrin snarled. "The base will be destroyed anyway, you saw to that, with the virus you implanted. All I've done is speed the process."

 Sarah glanced up at the Doctor in surprise and saw him shrug. "Well, I was hardly going to leave the base in operation, now, was I?" he calmly replied. "But there's rather a big difference between shutting the place down after it's been evacuated and blowing it up while everyone's still here, don't you agree?"

 Something clanged and whirred across the room and that discordant whine was growing steadily louder. "Doctor," Sarah urged. "I think we're running out of time."

 "That's right, we are running out of time," the Doctor agreed. "And yet there's absolutely no reason for anyone to die here today. Silrin, the ship hasn't gone yet. If you hurry you can still catch it. Go home, enjoy a quiet retirement – develop an interest in fine wines or art or whatever else catches your fancy. Be brave enough to live and big enough to let everyone else live, as well. Let me re-balance the load. There's still time – just."

 Something bleeped on the console behind the Doctor and he glanced over his shoulder at the display.

 "Transport vessel away – the Lindosians are clear, at least."

 "And Harry," Sarah added, relieved that at least one of them was out of the firing line. _And_ _I could have gone with him_ , a tiny, traitorous voice whispered, somewhere at the back of her mind. She could have gone with him and been out of the firing line as well, instead of stood here at gunpoint alongside a reactor that was about to go sky-high…except that she could never have left the Doctor to face this alone. She'd make the same choice again, every time, she knew that without question. So she had no one to blame but herself, really, if she got blown to bits.

 But it wouldn't come to that, surely. The Doctor was always in trouble and he always found a way out of it.

 "We've got minutes, Silrin." The Doctor raised his voice to be heard above the whining drone of the out-of-control reactor. "Minutes before that trawler heads home without you – minutes before the reactor overloads and takes out the entire base. Which will be first, do you think? How many people are going to die: the three of us – or a whole ship full?"

 "No one leaves," Silrin insisted, brandishing his gun wildly.

 "I could cobble a patch together, even now. It might not last long, but it wouldn't need to last long, would it – just long enough, long enough for everyone to get clear."

 "You aren't listening – no one leaves! Step away from there!"

 "They're so nearly away, Silrin, and whatever they've done here, they don't deserve death – let them have their second chance. Let them go."

 This was the Doctor at his most wheedling, but it wasn't going to work, Silrin wasn't going to be talked down, and Sarah wanted to believe that the Doctor would come up with something else to try, because that was what he did, he was brilliant…but he was also fallible, relied heavily on luck more often than not, and was as mortal as the next man if he happened to get shot – or blown up.

 Sometimes, in point of fact, he needed a little help to pull a miracle out of the bag.

 Silrin's trigger finger looked very twitchy, and somehow she doubted very much that his gun would be set to stun only, but he wasn't looking at her. He'd barely even registered her existence, come to that, and while normally she might feel a bit slighted, here and now she was glad because it meant she might just have a chance.

 While the Doctor continued to cajole, pouring all his charm and sincerity into that last-ditch, desperate effort, Sarah tried taking a tiny half-step to one side. Silrin didn't react – all his attention was focused on not allowing the Doctor to repair whatever damage he'd done to the reactor, and he had the upper hand here, between the reactor and the gun. All he had to do was wait it out for a few more minutes and he'd have won…unless something could be done to redress that balance.

 Sarah took another tiny step, and then another, edging sideways, never for a moment taking her eyes off the gun in Silrin's hand. The Doctor's debate with the Tarsin faded into background noise. The alarm continued to clang, shrill and insistent, and the reactor continued to whine alarmingly, but it was all just so much background noise, drowned out by the pounding of blood in her ears. Another step, and then another, away and around, and she was fairly certain the Doctor had seen what she was doing, but Silrin was so blind in his focus on the Time Lord that she might as well not be there at all. Surely that couldn't last, though, he'd notice her at any moment – she had to be fast.

 She threw herself forward before she could talk herself out of it, grabbed at Silrin's gun arm to push it up and away. The gun discharged, its energy bolt blasting harmlessly into the ceiling, and then she was struggling desperately, clinging to Silrin's arm as he registered her presence at last and fought back.

 He was a lot bigger than she was, and a lot stronger, too, and he had the gun. It was all she could do to keep it turned away from her, dimly aware that the Doctor was taking advantage of the distraction to wrestle furiously with the machinery around that console again, doing whatever he could to save them all from being blown to kingdom come. He needed more time. She had to buy him more time…

 There was no more time. One fleeting moment of frantic grappling and then she was off her feet and, almost before she'd registered her flight through the air, her back and head were impacting painfully with something large and hard and then she was on the ground seeing double.

 She lost valuable seconds blinking dazedly at nothing in particular until her vision cleared, then looked up just in time to see the Doctor throwing himself sideways as Silrin opened fire. The Tarsin charged forward with a furious roar as he unloaded energy bolt after energy bolt into the console, moving too fast to stop even if he'd wanted to, then a moment later the console was exploding in a fireball of sparks and arcing electricity and shrapnel and Silrin's angry roar became a scream of agony.

 Sarah threw an arm across her face, choking on pungent smoke as the sickening odour of burning flesh made her cough and gag. The alarm abruptly cut out, its cessation startling after such shrill constancy, but the reactor's whine was now approaching fever pitch, which meant the danger wasn't over, and where was the Doctor?

 He was already scrabbling back to his feet, using his hat to beat out flames smouldering in the hem of his coat as he stared in dismay at the ruined console.

 Silrin's charred corpse was slumped before that ruined console. Sarah could hardly bring herself to look at it as she scrambled to her feet as fast as her bruised back and aching limbs would allow.

 "The alarm stopped." It was probably the most stupid thing she could have said.

 "The connection was severed." The Doctor was already moving again, flapping his hat uselessly at the burning console and trying to reach past the flames into the guts of the machine. Sarah caught at his arm in alarm.

 "What are you doing?" she yelled over the drone of the reactor.

 "It won't hold," he yelled back. "The patch isn't complete, it won't hold and they aren't clear. There might still be a chance if I can just…no. No, it's no good." His eyes were almost bulging out of his face, the visual demonstration of his deep dismay as he pulled his arm back and flapped at the sleeve as a spark threatened to set it alight. "No, the damage is too great – there's nothing I can do."

 Standing alongside the burning wreckage of the machinery, Sarah felt cold. "How long do we have?"

 Before he could answer, another sound made itself known: a rumbling so low it registered more as vibration through the soles of Sarah's feet than a sound heard by her ears. The Doctor's head snapped around at once, his eyes lighting up. "At last! That's the trawler – the Tarsins are away, and about time, too."

 "Then it's over?" Sarah stared at him. "Everyone's safe?"

 "Everyone except us." He grabbed her hand and started running, almost pulling her off her feet, and she broke into a sprint trying to keep up.

 "Where are we going?" Harry had taken the transport vessel, somehow, hadn't he? And the Tarsins had used another spacecraft for their evacuation. Sarah tried to remember if she'd seen or heard of any other way off the base, but between the running and the exhaustion and the panic and what was threatening to develop into a splitting headache, her mind was in far too much of a whirl to think straight.

 "Transport hangar," the Doctor yelled. "Silrin's executive jet – we've got about two minutes, run!"

 She ran, on legs that felt as if they'd been stuffed with cotton wool, head pounding, lungs heaving, the Doctor just about pulling her arm out of its socket as he loped ahead with those easy, long-legged strides of his, gripping her hand tight and hauling her along as she stumbled behind.

 What she wouldn't give for longer, stronger legs right about now.

 How the Doctor knew the way, she had no idea; she could only trust that he did, counting down the passing seconds with the pounding of her feet.

 Curiously, the penetrating whine of the overloading reactor seemed to grow steadily louder the further they ran from it, driving them onward. At last they were in a corridor that was familiar, the entrance to the transport hanger just up ahead, they were almost there, and that was when the reactor exploded.

 The roar was deafening. The whole base shook, almost throwing them both off their feet, and the air filled with a strange whooshing, sucking, crackling sound, growing louder by the second.

 "Keep moving!" bellowed the Doctor, and he almost lifted her off her feet he hauled her back into motion so fast.

 She couldn't help but glance back over her shoulder as they raced through the door, saw the wall of flame rushing down the corridor toward them and knew that they were going to die…but then amazingly, miraculously, there was the TARDIS, sitting there waiting for them, exactly where it shouldn't have been.

 The Doctor couldn't have even known the Tarsins had it, but he wasted no time on surprise, simply charged for the door, fumbling for his key.

 They made it inside seconds ahead of the rushing flames as the base was engulfed.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 

 


	7. Epilogue

"Don't forget we have to collect Harry from the planet," Sarah said, when she could speak again, from her slumped position on the floor of the TARDIS, where she'd collapsed the moment they were through the door, her cotton-wool legs unable to support her a moment longer.

 The Doctor, in contrast, seemed as fresh as a daisy still, in spite of everything, already busying himself at the console as if nothing had happened while the familiar sound of the TARDIS engines offered assurance of their safe escape from the inferno. He looked mildly offended that she might think he needed reminding, and loftily sniffed that he hadn't forgotten. "I imagine the Brigadier would take it rather amiss if we mislaid his medical officer on the wrong side of the galaxy."

 "I don't suppose Harry would be thrilled, either." Struggling to a more upright sitting position, leaning back against the roundels, she pulled her knees tight to her chest and wrapped her arms around them to keep from shaking.

 It had been so close, far too close.

 "You know, days like this I wonder why I ever agreed to come with you," she muttered, and determinedly turned her face away from him, so as not to see how he reacted – or didn't react, as the case may be. "Look at me, I'm filthy – nose full of smoke, legs like jelly – haven't _slept_ in _days_." Her stomach rumbled loudly. "And dinner was goodness only knows how many planets and time zones ago!"

 In the silence that followed, she let her forehead drop onto her arms and didn't move even when the Doctor quietly came alongside her. A moment later there was a faint rustling sound, and she lifted her head to find herself staring into a bag of jelly babies, the Doctor waggling his eyebrows beseechingly just behind it.

 She took one and felt better immediately, ridiculous though it was.

 "We really did make a difference here, you know," he said. "The Lindosians are now free to develop as they should – and the Tarsins have also been saved from tyranny, and perhaps they'll have learned something, from the experience."

 "I thought they were monsters," she quietly told him, resting her chin on her arms. "The whole time, while I was with the slaves, I thought of the sky raiders as monsters. I saw what they did, how they treated the slaves – as if they were animals, worse than animals. There was a pit." Her eyes burned with hot, angry tears at the memory of it, choking her, making it hard to get the words out. "I found a pit – full of bodies – slaves, used up and then thrown away. Monsters. They were monsters. But then…" She remembered the feel of the gun jerking in her hand, how it had felt to see the guard collapse like a puppet with its string cut, because of her, and swallowed hard on the wave of nausea the memory induced. "But they were just people, weren't they? Just people. And sometimes people do terrible things. My people have done terrible things, too. It doesn't mean they aren't worth saving."

 "Sometimes people do wonderful things, as well." The Doctor's voice was soft and deep, almost hypnotic. "Two sides of the same coin. You don't really want to go home, do you?"

 "Yes," she said. "No," and then, "I just want to sleep," and that was the complete and honest truth of it.

 "Then sleep." He ruffled her hair in a way that would infuriate her if it were anyone else, then pushed up to his feet and headed back to the console. "You know where the bedrooms are."

 "Not until we've picked Harry up." She began to pull herself upright once more, aching muscles protesting all the way. "Are you sure you can land in the right place this time? We don't want to leave him stranded."

 "Sarah." He shot her a look of deep reproach. "Oh ye of little faith."

 "Well, you said we were going to Scotland and we landed on Lindos instead," she pointed out. "And he'll think we've been blown up, or something."

 "It's a short hop, Sarah." The Doctor's voice positively dripped with offended dignity. "There's really nothing to it. Trust me – we might even get there before him."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 It was a fully automated system, pre-programmed – just a matter of punching a few pre-set commands – and it worked, like clockwork.

 As the transport vessel set down safely in the mountain base on Lindos, Harry felt a broad smile spreading across his face as anxiety gave way to exhilaration. He'd experienced some incredible things since setting foot inside the Doctor's TARDIS – horrifying, incomprehensible, wonderful things – but this was definitely his favourite.

 It had also been one of the most terrifying experiences of his life, all those innocent lives resting squarely on his shoulders, with no safety net for error, so he allowed himself a few moments to catch his breath and let his frantic heart rate slow to a more normal pace before clambering out of the cockpit and heading around to the cargo bay to release his passengers.

 Would the reactor up at the moon base have hit meltdown by now? Had the Doctor been able to prevent it – or had he and Sarah at least managed to get away in time? The Doctor wouldn't have allowed Sarah to come to any harm, surely, yet Harry couldn't help but worry as he hit the release button to open the cargo bay doors, wondering how long it might be before he found out what had become of them – if ever.

 Roba sprang out of the cargo bay like a jack-in-the-box and leapt into his arms, yelling his head off with triumph and delight, and that childish joy was infectious, driving out all gloomy fears. Harry laughed as he swung the boy around and set him down, then turned back to start helping the others make their way out, and that was when he heard it.

 Engines – TARDIS engines. They'd made it.

 dwdwdwdwdw

 There were more Lindosians than Sarah had realised, some she recognised from the mine and many more she hadn't seen before. Some of them were injured and some were sick, some were frightened, others triumphant, all of them hungry and most of them confused, unsure whether they dared believe the ordeal was over or not.

 It seemed to take forever to sort them all out, but there was food and first aid supplies in the abandoned Tarsin base, and Harry was a doctor and the Doctor was the Doctor, and slowly but surely order was imposed upon the chaos; the freed slaves began to revive, both physically and mentally and started to organise themselves. They came from different settlements, different tribes, and banded together accordingly into smaller and larger groups, working together to get their bearings and make plans for their journeys home.

 While the Doctor busied himself with something technical deep inside the base, Sarah and Harry followed the rag-tag refugees outside to find a new day dawning on Lindos. The groups of survivors began to drift away, one by one, until only Emera's group were left. Olos was back on his feet now and Sarah was happy to see it, exchanged handshakes with them all and wished them well. She returned Roba's enthusiastic hug of farewell with all her heart and watched fondly as he ran to say goodbye to Harry, then turned to say a heartfelt farewell of her own.

 "I did not believe you," Emera softly said. "You told us that if we strove, one step and then another, there would be a way, that we might be free. And I did not believe it was possible, yet here we stand. Free."

 Sarah caught at her hand and squeezed it. "You came with me, though. You believed enough for that."

 "I still do not know where you come from, you and your friends. But I think perhaps the gods sent you, to save us."

 "You saved yourselves," Sarah told her, "By not giving up – by taking the chance when you had it."

 "Perhaps we all saved one another." Emera smiled warmly, and then glanced over at Harry and Roba with a chuckle. "I think my son will miss your friend."

 "I think he will," Sarah agreed with a smile. "I'm glad I met you, Emera. Be safe, on the journey home – and give your daughters a big hug from me."

 "I will. But the first embrace will be mine and mine alone."

 And that was farewell. Sarah watched as the group made their way out across the valley floor to the hills beyond, bathed in the rising sun and freedom of the rest of their lives, waving until they were out of sight. Then she wandered over to join Harry, who'd found a handy rock seat nearby.

 "So you flew a spaceship all by yourself, did you?" Dropping onto the rock alongside him, she watched his face light up with boyish delight.

 "I did." He was very pleased with himself. "It wasn't actually all that difficult, really."

 Sarah laughed. "Oh, so you'll be trading in your stethoscope for a spacesuit when we get back to Earth, then," she teased and he huffed a rueful little chuckle.

 "If we ever get back to Earth, not a chance. No, I know where my calling lies, and it certainly isn't in space."

 And that was rather a telling little statement, she felt, all things considered. "What do you mean, if? Of course we'll make it back. We always do. The Doctor just…has a knack for finding the most scenic route possible."

 Harry leaned forward, resting an elbow on his knee and his chin on a hand, surveying the valley before them. "Well, this particular leg of the detour certainly is scenic, I will say."

 It was. With everything that had been happening, Sarah had almost forgotten to notice just how gloriously, beautifully alien the landscape of Lindos was, but she admired it anew now, leaning back to soak up the deliciously hot rays of the rising sun and breathing in the heady scent of the flowers that carpeted the mountainside.

 "So do you regret it?" she suddenly thought to ask, remembering their conversation of however long ago it had been, camping out in those hills in the dark.

 "Do I regret what?" Harry had evidently forgotten all about it.

 "You told me to ask you again later, when this was all over. So I am. Do you regret coming along for the ride? I know the Doctor didn't exactly warn you what to expect – and I don't think even he expected to be away for as long as this, so…do you?"

 Gazing out across the alien landscape, Harry looked about as content as she'd seen him since the moment the Doctor tricked him into setting foot inside the TARDIS as a joke that had got further and further out of hand with every new destination they reached that wasn't UNIT. "No," he said at last. "No, I don't think I do. I don't suppose I'd have agreed to come along if I'd been asked, of course, if I'd known what it meant –"

 "If you'd believed it, you mean."

 "But I'm here now. And there it is. So no. No regrets."

 "I'm glad," Sarah told him, and she was. As fond as she was of the Doctor, in all his enigmatic, charismatic, irresistibly wonderful alienness, it was fun having a human friend along to share the experience on a more equal footing, and she would hate to think he was miserable about it. "I can see the 'but' coming before you say it, though," she added with a grin. " _But_ you'd quite like to head back to UNIT now and find out why the Brigadier was calling for us."

 He looked slightly chagrined. "Am I that transparent?"

 "Oh, only sometimes," she teased, but then added, more seriously, "I'm sure we'll end up in the right place this time, you know – the Doctor won't leave the Brig in the lurch, not if he really needs help."

 Harry smiled. "I'm sure you're right."

 She dug an elbow into his ribs, a quick, playful jab. "Of course I'm right."

 They fell silent for a moment, watching the sun rise and the moons set in that brilliant green sky above purple-blue hills, and it was beautiful and strange and alien, and reminded Sarah again both of how much she loved experiencing new worlds like this and of how long it had been since she last saw the reassuringly familiar sights and sounds of home.

 "It'll be good to go home for a while," she admitted, thinking longingly of her own comfy bed and her favourite meal at her favourite restaurant, such simple pleasures from what felt like a lifetime ago. "It seems such a long time."

 "Really?" Harry glanced at her in surprise. "I thought you'd have been happy to carry on indefinitely, taking on the universe one frontier at a time."

 "Hey, I might not be facing court martial if I don't show up for parade but I do have a life too, you know," Sarah pointed out. "And it's about time I looked in on it. Aunt Lavinia must think I've fallen off the face of the Earth or something."

 "Well, she'd be right, wouldn't she?" Harry mildly observed, and that brought her up sharp because he was right.

 "I've never really thought about it like that. When I'm away, it's as if real life doesn't exist any more – it just gets put on hold until I'm back. But we've never been away as long as this before, not in one stretch." And that was another point. "We don't even know how long it's been, do we? Not for them and not for us – I've completely lost track."

 "So perhaps now I should ask you," Harry quietly said. "Do you mind?"

 "No." The answer came instinctively; she didn't even have to think about it. "No. I know I get a bit fed up sometimes, but I'd do it all again. I don't care how long it's been. I don't care how tired I feel, how many deadlines I've missed, or how many bills I haven't paid – I'd do it all again in a heartbeat."

 "Are you two coming?" a powerful voice boomed out behind them. "Or shall I go without you."

 And just like that, the moment of reflection was over and it was time to move on.

 "I like that!" Sarah protested, swinging around to see the Doctor leaning against the tunnel entrance, grinning. "We've been waiting for you to finish…whatever it is you've been doing."

 "Whatever I've been doing?" he indignantly echoed, and this was a game they could play all day and they both knew it, which was why he was smiling as he loftily explained that he'd been setting the outpost to self-destruct once everyone was clear, because it was alien technology that the Lindosians could very well do without, their development had been interfered with enough already – oh, and the countdown was already ticking, so they'd better hurry up if they wanted to catch their ride home.

 So they ran, back through the tunnel into the cavern beyond where the TARDIS was waiting for them, a slightly more leisurely sprint than the one up on that moon base, but urgent enough, into the TARDIS and away.

 "To Scotland, then," the Doctor declared. "Right, Harry? I believe the Brigadier is waiting for us."

 "Thank you," said Harry, looking relieved.

 "I think we'll take the long way around, though…" the Doctor added, and that casual little statement promptly triggered a red warning flag.

 "Oh, Doctor, you promised," Sarah protested, in the same moment that Harry cried out, "Now hang on just a minute," and the Doctor lifted a hand to quieten them both, looking amused.

 "Relax. Honestly, I've never known such worry-worts. In fact, relaxing is just what I want you to do, both of you – fat lot of good you'd be to the Brigadier in this state. So go on, be off with you, the pair of you. Get a good night's sleep while I just give the stabilisers the once over, and we'll be with the Brigadier and his Scottish emergency before you know it, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed."

 dwdwdwdwdw

 What with one thing and another, Harry hadn't really ventured much beyond the console room of the TARDIS before. The corridors seemed to go on for ever, and if he weren't quite so tired he might have had a good mind to explore, but as it was, with the crisis over and the journey home underway, he was tired enough to simply fall onto the first bed he saw, asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.

 It was the first good night's sleep he'd had since they left Earth, and, like Sarah, he'd completely lost track of how long ago that had been, running around from one place and time to another as they'd been. He awoke unknown hours later, feeling well rested and refreshed, to find Sarah still asleep on another bed just across the way.

 There was no sign of the Doctor.

 Harry went exploring. He got lost more than once, but along the way managed to find a bathroom, a kitchen and the most ridiculously enormous wardrobe he'd ever encountered, so huge he scarcely dared go in, in case he never found his way back out again. Most of the outfits were outrageously garish, but he managed to turn up something that would do and quickly freshened up, dropping his own sadly travel-stained clothes into some kind of Laundromat machine set into the wall, then found himself a bite to eat and made a cup of tea to take back for Sarah.

 He only got lost once on his way back to the sleeping quarters. Sarah was just waking up as he arrived, so he gave her the tea, left her to her ablutions and headed for the console room, where he found the Doctor in more or less exactly the same position they'd left him – did the man never need to sleep?

 "I say, Doctor – you haven't been at it all night, have you?"

 "Good morning, Harry," the Doctor cheerfully boomed, as a tremendous final wheeze and the stilling of the central column indicated that they'd reached their destination – or a destination, at any rate. "You're just in time, we're landing. Where's Sarah?"

 "Coming," Sarah herself called from just down the hallway.

 "It was the navigational stabilisers, you see." The Doctor turned back to Harry.

 "What was?" Harry was almost sure he did it on purpose, carrying on a conversation they'd never had just to keep him on his toes. He never knew what the man was talking about, half the time.

 "That took us off course, of course. High time the old girl had a thorough overhaul, you know. Still, it's all in good working order now, I'm sure of it. Almost sure, at any rate." He buffed a spot on the console with his sleeve and then patted it fondly. "Yes, I'm almost sure of it. Get the door, would you, Harry."

 The door control was one of the few switches on that console that Harry dared touch, after the alarming outcome of his first encounter with this remarkable machine. He flipped the switch and headed for the opening door, hoping rather than expecting to see Loch Ness, which was where the Brigadier's summons had originated.

 The door opened into space – or height, rather – and he had to catch hold of the frame to avoid stepping out onto nothing, looked down at a tremendous drop of many thousands of feet, dizzyingly far and crowded with traffic…airborne traffic, zipping around at breath-taking speed. Looking up again, he blinked and jerked back as another of those flying cars zipped past, almost close enough to touch – and then another, and another. The sky was full of them, zooming around in all directions and at all levels.

 It was a city of some kind – a city of skyscrapers, impossibly high, all glass and chrome, graceful and curved, busy and bustling with air traffic of all shapes and sizes, as far as the eye could see.

 Not Loch Ness, then.

 "Er, Doctor…" 

 

~END~

  

 © J.B, May 2013

 

 

 

 


End file.
